Meet the Team
Get to know our workshop presenters.
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.
James Michael Tate
James Michael Tate is an assistant professor in the Architecture Department at Texas A&M University and he maintains an architecture practice, T8projects. Tate received his Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture and Bachelor of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University. He’s held fellowship positions at the University of Michigan, Common Ground, and the Auburn University Rural Studio. Tate worked in the offices of MOS and Michael Maltzan Architecture. Since joining the faculty at Texas A&M in 2018, Tate’s design-research projects seek to empower communities in the forests of East Texas and the urban centers of the Texas Triangle through mass timber and housing initiatives. The quality of Tate’s activities has been recognized by the Texas A&M Montague Scholar Award (2021), the School of Architecture Regan Interdisciplinary Faculty Prize (2022), and the Texas Forestry Association Communicator of the Year Award (2022). He is on the Softwood Lumber Board’s Wood Institute Advisory Panel.
Jason Griffiths
Jason Griffiths is an associate professor at the University of Lincoln Nebraska College of Architecture. He received his Masters in Architecture with distinction from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UK in 1994. Jason has held the Hyde Chair of Excellence, the Hawthorne Distinguished Professor and is currently the Cecil Steward Professor. From 2017-19, he was a professor of Summer Immersion at The School of Architecture at Taliesin, and in 2022, was named the Hannover Visiting Professor at Leibnitz University. He has received the ACSA Design-Build Award three times, the WoodWorks/ Wood Products Council Wood Design Award, and the 2023 Softwood Lumber Board Timber Education Prize. Significant grant awards include the USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations Grant and the Nebraska Environmental Trust Award. In 2012, Jason received the Deutsches Architekturmuseum Book Award for his book Manifest Destiny (AA Publication). Other publications include the AA Files, 30 60 90, LA Times and Volume. Jason has received prizes in eleven competitions including first prize in the AA FAB 2009, Temple of Laughter, Millennium Café competitions. Other competition prizes include Future Visions of Kyoto, Aomori Housing, Shinkenchiku Residential Design (three times) and the Oklahoma Memorial.
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.
