Beltrán, Brody promoted
at College of Architecture

Two Texas A&M College of Architecture educators were recently promoted. Effective Sept. 1 of this year, assistant architecture professor Liliana Beltrán, receives tenure and will be promoted to associate professor and Sam Brody, who is currently a tenured associate professor of urban planning, will become a full professor.

Beltrán's primary research is focused on the integration of sustainability into architectural design, particularly promoting the design and construction of communities and buildings that contribute to a sustainable future.

She has focused on the design, development, and monitoring of advanced environmental envelope technologies which use optical devices that introduce daylight at distances from a building's perimeter. She is currently developing a unique artificial skydome simulator facility and methodologies for evaluating visual qualities of interior spaces.

Beltrán teaches courses in energy and environmental management, daylighting design and analysis, "green" building design tools and sustainability.

She has lectured and published extensively on daylighting, energy efficiency in buildings, advanced lighting technologies, climatic responsive architecture and tools for green building design.

She is one of the recipients of the 1999 Progressive Architecture Research Award and has been a Fulbright Fellow and a Robert Thunen Fellow in the Illumination Engineering Society.

Beltrán has been a consultant for UNESCO's Division of Cultural Heritage of Paris and has consulted on the restoration of the Kuwait National Museum and the city of Berkeley's Best Builders Program.

A member of the Texas A&M faculty since 2002, she earned a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon in 1985 and a Professional Degree of Architecture from the National University of Engineering of Peru in 1983.

Sam Brody's research focuses on ecologically sustainable approaches to planning and management, particularly in coastal zones. His work examines the impact of physical development on the natural environment and generates management solutions that balance the need for human growth with the conservation of critical natural resources.

Planning processes and place-based policy are two fundamental and interrelated streams of inquiry for his work.

Brody has a joint appointment to the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M and the Department of Marine Sciences at Texas A&M University at Galveston, where he holds the George P. Mitchell ‘40 Chair in Sustainable Coasts.

A Faculty Fellow at the Texas A&M Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, Brody is the director of the HRRC's Environmental Planning and Sustainability Research Unit. In Galveston, he serves the director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores.

He teaches courses in planning for coastal and marine protected areas, dispute resolution, sustainable development and environmental planning.

In 2004, Brody earned the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award for research aimed at developing new, sustainable techniques for flood mitigation and watershed management in rapidly developing coastal regions.

Brody, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2002, earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Planning and Policy from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2002, a Master of Science in Resource Policy and Behavior from the University of Michigan in 1996 and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and Anthropology from Bowdoin College in 1992.

- Posted: Mar. 12, 2010 -