José Pinto Duarte is Stuckeman Chair in Design Innovation and director of the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing (SCDC) at Penn State. Duarte’s expertise encompasses architecture, urban planning, computational design, generative systems and digital fabrication. Duarte's scholarly work in his area of expertise, shape grammars, is considered to be among the most highly recognized in this field internationally.

Duarte co-led PennStateDen@Mars, an interdisciplinary team composed of students and faculty representing the Colleges of Arts and Architecture, Engineering, Agricultural Sciences and the Materials Research Institute, who competed in NASA’s ambitious challenge that called on entrants to develop advanced 3D-printing technology to produce a structurally sound habitat that could be printed by NASA space explorers on Mars and beyond.

The team’s design, which finished in 2nd place, included printing a fully enclosed structure – something that has never been accomplished in 3D-printed home construction research. This work brought the team one step closer to the intended goal of the research, which is to develop 3D-printed home construction technology that could impact homelessness or help to rebuild areas ravaged by natural disaster.