Sarah Billington

Sarah Billington is the UPS Foundation Professor at Stanford University as well as chair and professor of civil and environmental engineering in the School of Engineering and the Doerr School of Sustainability. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Billington’s research focuses on the impact of building design and materials on human wellbeing. This work includes developing design tools to quantify nature experience in buildings, understanding and increasing wellbeing in and through affordable housing, and identifying the risk of forced labor in building material supply chains through fingerprinting and AI methods. The goal of her research program is to provide building occupants, designers, and owners tools to achieve built environments that meet their needs and to design interventions that support human wellbeing over time while preserving privacy. While no longer active in this area, Billington is also an expert on the design and evaluation of sustainable, durable construction materials including bio-based composites and ductile cement-based composites for sustainable, durable built environments. She is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute.

Prior to her Stanford appointment, Billington served on the faculty at Cornell University in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering for five years. She received her BSE with high honors in Civil Engineering and Operations Research and a certificate in Architecture Studies from Princeton University and her MS and PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.