Caitlin Mueller
Associate Professor
MIT, Dept. of Architecture and Dept. of Environmental Engineering

Speaker: ODDS & MODS — Design Innovation for Scalable Material Circularity in Architecture

Caitlin Mueller is a researcher and educator who works at the creative interface of architecture, structural engineering, and computation. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Architecture and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in the Building Technology Program, where she leads the Digital Structures research group. Her work focuses on new computational design and digital fabrication methods for innovative, high-performance buildings and structures that empower a more sustainable and equitable future. Key research projects have focused on multi-physics design, optimization, and fabrication of low-cost, low-carbon concrete structures, and on harnessing emerging techniques in machine learning to develop more human-centric computational design processes. Recently, she has developed and tested algorithmic design approaches for unconventional material use in building structures, focusing on underutilized wood sources and reassemble-able concrete parts. Mueller holds three degrees from MIT in Architecture, Computation, and Building Technology, and one from Stanford in Structural Engineering. Mueller was awarded the ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence by the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture in 2021 and the Diversity Achievement Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in 2022.