SMART 2025 highlights the potential of engineered wood
Written by Kris Herndon
This summer at Yale, over the course of two days in August, the Center for Materials Innovation (CMI) convened a multidisciplinary conference to explore recent and emerging innovations in engineered wood.
The fourth in a series of SMART (Sustainable Materials Research Summit) conferences, this was the first to be hosted at Yale, and the first to focus on engineered wood.
Read more • Approximately 7 minutesBroadly speaking, engineered wood is not new. Wood is one of the oldest building materials known to man, and humans have been finding ways to improve its strength and durability for many centuries.
But recent innovations have drastically redefined what’s possible, opening the door to a new era of sustainable construction and more. CMI’s founding director, Liangbing (Bing) Hu, happens to be the driving force behind many of those innovations.
Hu is the Carol and Douglas Melamed Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Materials Science at Yale Engineering. He is also the founder of InventWood, and a notable pioneer and inventor in the field of materials science.
Hu & the Superwood revolution
Hu’s lab pioneered the use of nanoscale cell-wall engineering to dramatically modify the physical properties of wood. Among InventWood’s novel materials is SuperWood, a delignified, densified wood with so many desirable characteristics that it’s hard to list them all.
“People like wood better than steel and humanity has a long and happy relationship with wood.
Liangbing (Bing) Hu
Carol and Douglas Melamed Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Materials Science
SuperWood is durable and fire-resistant. It’s lighter and stronger than steel, while also being cheaper and cleaner to produce. It can be made from any kind of wood, including waste wood and bamboo (which is actually a grass). It sequesters carbon. It’s resistant to termites, rot, moisture, and mold. And, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it’s also beautiful.
That last point isn’t as minor as it may seem. As Hu points out, SuperWood (and wood in general) is biophilic, meaning its inclusion in the built environment reinforces the human connection with nature. Research shows that the use of biophilic building materials has a profoundly positive impact on human health and well-being.
“People like wood better than steel,” Hu observes, “and humanity has a long and happy relationship with wood.”
SMART 2025: A multidisciplinary approach
The two-day SMART 2025 conference was divided into six sessions, each with a unifying theme, with Climate and CO2, Engineered Wood Materials and Processes, and AI in Engineered Wood R&D on day one, and Advanced Properties of Engineered Wood, Use of Engineered Wood, and Life Cycle Analysis and Forestry Management on day two.
A central premise of the SMART conference series is that transitioning to renewable materials and sustainable practices can mitigate the environmental impact of the building industry. The broad range of specializations among the presenters highlighted just how complex and multifaceted that transition will be.
Topics ran the gamut from broad to hyperspecialized, with presentations that addressed AI, architecture, building codes, bridge failure, carbon sequestration, climate science, forestry, nanotechnology, and physics, to name just a few. Attendees included researchers from a broad range of specializations; professors, students and post-docs; editors and authors; representatives from Federal agencies; and foundation leaders and investors as well as scientists and engineers.
The mood, however, was that of a tight-knit and collegial group. That was by design: “One goal is to meet other people who are working in the field,” Hu said. “This particular conference focused on wood, so it’s small enough and focused enough that people have a shared language to exchange ideas.”
Hu also noted that the robust tradition of collaboration across disciplines within the university is one reason Yale made an ideal venue for SMART 2025. “The event provided a unique opportunity to learn from Yale students and scholars.”
Equally crucial, academics and scientists from other institutions and representatives from industry provided avenues for further research and potential funding. “Industry provides questions, and then we can provide answers,” he said. “And we are working on useful questions that address a need.”
Yale's collaborative advantage
Co-organizers Prof. Alan Organschi and Prof. Yuan Yao were key to the success of the event, as was the involvement of the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA), Yale School of the Environment (YSE) and Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS). Improving and implementing these advanced materials will take place against a complex backdrop of real-world concerns, so interdisciplinary cooperation and shared knowledge are essential to true understanding of the issues at stake – from the life cycle of trees, to forestry management, to reforming building codes and industry standards, to decarbonization and reshaping the built environment, and beyond.
Presenters from within Yale, including Mark Ashton, Senior Associate Dean of The Forest School, YSE; Philip Bernstein, Deputy Dean and Professor in the Practice, YSoA; Anna Dyson, Hines Professor of Architecture at the Yale Schools of Architecture (YSoA) and Environment (YSE), and founding Director of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture (Yale CEA); Alan Organschi, Professor in the Practice, principal at GOA, and Director of the Building Lab (YSoA); Lu Lu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics & Data Science (S&DS); and Yuan Yao, Associate Professor of Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Systems (YSE) and Chemical & Environmental Engineering (SEAS), made invaluable contributions to the conference.
Among many avenues for future research that emerged from the conference, Hu highlighted stress testing and assessments for engineered wood under varying weather conditions in different regions; testing for earthquake resistance; and the potential for AI to increase efficiency in the production process for SuperWood.
“Trees are all different,” he explained. “It’s like a person; there are no two trees that are identical. Even the same kind of tree, when planted close to each other they tend to grow in a much denser cellular structure,” while, if planted farther apart, the same type of tree will grow faster and taller, resulting in a more porous structure.
Those variations make it difficult to standardize production processes for engineered wood, including SuperWood. “When we try to process them, the difference in structure will require different kinds of processes,” Hu explained. But cross-sections of wood contain a vast amount of information – exactly the kind of large-data-set analysis that AI excels at. So, AI could be a powerful tool in optimizing the process conditions for engineered wood. “You can automate part of the selection process,” said Hu.
Beyond construction: New frontiers
As the potential for SuperWood in the construction industry continues to emerge, Hu is turning his attention to new frontiers for the material, including automotive design, aeronautics in the defense industry, and space exploration.
“I would like have the material go to space,” he said. “Many people are thinking about space applications… This material could work better than steel in space, not only because it’s light, but because it could work better in low temperature. This material could have a very interesting performance in extreme temperatures.”
These innovative techniques and materials are emerging at a time of both crisis and opportunity in the ongoing fight against climate change. As decarbonization continues to present an urgent and global challenge, sustainable materials have the potential to provide elegant new solutions to the tangle of overlapping problems faced by builders and designers who seek to make decarbonization a priority.
As for Hu, he’s already looking to the future – and the next SMART conference. “Next year we will be even better prepared,” he said.
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Published Date
Sep 23, 2025
