Dr. Alberto Pugnale is an Architect and Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne. He is the Academic Convenor of the Hallmark Research Initiative (HRI) on Bioinspiration, and the Pathway Coordinator of the Architecture Major – Bachelor of Design. In 2007, he won the IASS HANGAI Prize, an international contest of research papers that are related to the field of shell and spatial structures for young researchers under 30. In 2008 he won a research scholarship granted by the ISI Foundation, Lagrange Project (Turin, Italy), related to the study of complex architectural and structural bodies. During the same year, he won the 3rd prize at the IABSE Photo Contest of Structures, an international competition of photos that exhibit the achievement/art of structural engineering. In 2019, he got the ABP Open Award for Excellence in Teaching for the innovative development of “How virtual Becomes Real”, a design studio that includes intensives and blended learning modes, and is positioned at the intersection of theory and practice, historical precedent and projective design. He is currently leading a large Learning & Teaching Grant on ePortfolio. From 2010 to 2012 he was Assistant Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has been teaching as an invited lecturer in Italy, France, China, and the US. At present, he is a member of the ‘International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures’ (IASS), of the ‘Architecture Science Association’ (ASA) and of the ‘Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand’ (SAHANZ). He is also a reviewer of international journals and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Nexus Network Journal and the International Journal of Space Structures.