Meet the Team
Get to know our guest speakers from Clemson University and other successful timber programs from across the U.S.
André Filiatrault
André Filiatrault, Ph.D., P.Eng, is a Professor of Structural Engineering at the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Italy and an Emeritus Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his master’s (1985) and Ph.D. (1988) degrees in civil engineering from the University of British Columbia after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Université de Sherbrooke in 1983. After a two-year stint as an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, he joined the Department of Civil Engineering at École Polytechnique, part of Université de Montréal, where he became a full professor in 1997. Professor Filiatrault joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1998, where he was a Professor of Structural Engineering until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he served as the Deputy Director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) at the University at Buffalo (UB) then as Director from 2008 to 2011. He is the current founding president of the International Association for the Seismic Performance Of Non-Structural-Elements (SPONSE). His research over the last 33 years has focused on the seismic testing, analysis and design of civil engineering structures and non-structural building components. The professional achievements resulting from his research and teaching activities include five textbooks, more than 380 peer-reviewed scientific publications, the 1990 Sir Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski Medal from the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, the 2002 Moisseiff Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the 2021 Best Paper in Analysis & Computation Award from the ASCE of Journal of Structural Engineering. Professor Filiatrault has continuously taught an undergraduate course on the design of wood structures at UCSD and UB from 2002 to 2020.
John Lawson
John Lawson is a Professor in Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California, where he teaches two courses in timber design and has received ASCE’s ExCEEd New Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award among others. In addition, he lectures regularly in several national professional development webinars on structural wood design, as well as has published a number of research papers, design tools and design examples. Lawson is a licensed Structural Engineer in California and Arizona, and has over 25 years of practitioner design experience and forensic investigative work. He holds a Master of Science in Structural Engineering from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Scott Schiff
Professor Scott D. Schiff received his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988. After graduation, he was appointed as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois where he taught classes and worked on three funded research projects. In August 1989, he joined the civil engineering faculty at Clemson University as an assistant professor of civil engineering and was promoted through the ranks to professor in 2003. In 2013, he co-founded Emagine, a College of Engineering and Science program, to provide STEM outreach to middle and high school students throughout South Carolina. In 2014, he led the development of the Wood Utilization + Design Institute at Clemson University to foster collaborative research and public service across the Clemson campus and with other state institutions, industry organizations, and private industry. In January 2015, he “retired” from Clemson University with the title of emeritus professor of civil engineering to join Applied Technology Council (ATC) as director of projects and managed research related to structural engineering and hazard mitigation. In the summer of 2016, he decided to return to academia and taught part time at Kennesaw State University, before joining the civil engineering faculty at Kansas State University in December 2017 as a teaching professor.
Schiff had two primary research interests at Clemson University. One area of research was related to the structural performance on highway and railway bridges, and included monitoring of structural response in the field and development or improvement of structural systems. The second area of research focused on the performance of building and envelope systems in high winds (hurricanes and tornadoes). While many different systems were investigated, the majority of this research was related to light-frame wood construction.
Pat Layton
Pat is the Director of the Wood Utilization + Design Institute and former Director of the School of Agricultural, Forest, and Environmental Sciences (2010-2014) at Clemson University. She came to Clemson in late 1999 as the Chair of the Department of Forest Resources. Before joining Clemson, she was a Senior Director with the American Forest & Paper Association where she represented the industry in recycling, life cycle analysis, sustainability, and energy. Prior to that, Pat was a Manager at Scott Paper Company, where she developed new forestry and marketing initiatives, including playing a vital role in the development of the American Forest & Paper Association’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative Program. Before joining Scott Paper, she was a Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Short Rotation Wood Crops Program.
Weichiang Pang
Pang is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Clemson University. He is the current chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Technical Committee on Wood and a member of the advisory board to the South Carolina Department of Insurance. His research focusses on structural performance of wood structures and risk assessment of structures under natural hazards. He has experience in conducting full-scale testing of both light-frame and mass timber structures. Dr. Pang served as an associate editor for the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, handling technical papers relevant to wood structures. Dr. Pang has authored and co-authored more than 150 journal and conference papers. He also teaches wood structural design to both undergraduate and graduate engineering students on a yearly basis.
Michael Stoner
Michael Stoner is a Lecturer in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering and a Research Associate with the Wood Utilization + Design Institute. He teaches structural design courses, specifically the culminating Keystone design course for structural engineers. Michael graduated with his Ph.D. from Clemson in 2020 studying the performance of mass timber structures in high-wind events and continues to be involved in mass timber research at Clemson.
Dustin Albright
Dustin Albright is an Associate Professor and the acting Assistant Director in the School of Architecture at Clemson University, where he has taught since 2012. He is a founding faculty fellow in Clemson’s Wood Utilization + Design Institute. Drawing on his dual education in engineering and architecture, Dustin teaches structures courses and design studios in both the undergraduate and graduate architecture programs. His research revolves around prefabricated timber building systems at varying scales and across a variety of applications. In addition to his work at Clemson, Dustin is president-elect of the Building Technology Educators’ Society (BTES), and he practices professionally with Hanbury, a multidisciplinary design firm based in Norfolk, Virginia.