Dr Kyra Wood is an experienced design academic and research project manager with a professional background in architecture and design. Her current research focusses on timber design and production for regenerative architecture at the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood. She works regularly with partners in the Australian timber and construction industries as well as several interstate and overseas research institutions.

Kyra supervises post-graduate students at the University of Tasmania and as an adjunct at the University of the Sunshine Coast and is passionate about supporting early career researchers and postgraduate students to thrive in their chosen fields of research.

Biography

Prior to commencing work as a timber researcher, Kyra worked as a registered architect in Adelaide (not currently practicing). She completed a PhD in architecture at the University of South Australia in 2018 titled: ‘Collaborative urban design for stakeholder engagement in world cultural heritage conservation: a practical study in the context of the citadel wall in Hue, Vietnam’. She is highly experienced in and dedicated to bringing together diverse groups of stakeholders to collaborate on complex or ‘wicked’ problems in relation to sustainable building and urban development challenges, having coordinated projects in multiple contexts including in Australia, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. Although her research focus is currently on timber design and production, she maintains an ongoing interest in critical design ethnography and applies her background experience in collaborative design engagement in cross-cultural contexts to her current role managing various research projects that straddle the needs of the timber and design communities, where similarly complex challenges and diverse stakeholder groups exist.

Kyra joined the Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood in 2019, and was quickly recruited as the principal researcher and team leader for two Launceston-based National Institute for Forest Products Innovation (NIFPI) projects focusing on timber durability. These pilot NIFPI projects were jointly funded by the Federal Government, state governments and industry to support small-scale, short-term collaborative research, and in 2022, the Australian Federal Government committed a further $100 million to a major NIFPI centre in Australia for ongoing research over the next 4-5 years that directly builds on the successes of three pilot NIFPI centres – in Launceston, Mount Gambier and Gippsland.

In 2022, Kyra was nominated and selected as the inaugural Australian Ambassador for Women in Wood Science by the International Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST), and is currently serving as a member of the SWST Emerging and Critical Issues Committee. She was recently invited to join the University of Queensland’s Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Hub to Advance Timber for Australia’s Future Built Environment as a chief investigator.

Career summary

Qualifications

Memberships

Committee associations

• Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST) Emerging and Critical Issues Committee member, 2023 - ongoing
• Inaugural Australian Ambassador for SWST Women in Wood Science, 2022-2023

Administrative expertise

• Principal researcher and project leader, NIFPI research projects/National University Wood Challenge
• Project manager and liaison, T40 Building Renovation and CSAW Relocation
• Contract administration and project management, various built works at Kilpatrick Architecture.