Esther Obonyo

Associate Professor of Engineering Design & Architectural Engineering, Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Esther Obonyo is associate professor of Engineering Design and Architectural Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. She is also the Director for the Food Energy Water Nexus for East Africa in Global Programs. She served as the Interim Director of the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship program from January to August 2017 while concurrently working in Office of the Vice Provost for Global Program Office as Penn State’s Inaugural Global Faculty Fellow. Between August 2004 and July 2015, she was a faculty member at the University of Florida's (UF) Rinker School of Construction Management. While at UF, she also served as a faculty entrepreneurship Fellow at College of Business. In addition, for the past 4 years, she has been a Visiting Professor in TIP University Manila through the PhilDev IDEA Program (an initiative directed at enhancing the practice of Technopreneurship in the Philippines).

Dr Obonyo’s professional experience and expertise cuts across the following themes: sustainable structural materials, intelligent information and knowledge-based systems and entrepreneurship. She has taught a construction practice-oriented courses in TIP’s Professional Graduate Program.  She has extensive industry experience, having worked as a Construction Engineer, Project Manager and Innovations Analyst in several engineering and construction companies in Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States. Her most recent construction job site related experiences include project management in a $8 million retrofit project involving replacing the outer façade; cost engineering work in a 370,240 square foot development for Luxury Apartments, and; design engineering for concrete subcontract work valued at $8,628,600.