Building Materials Research Director

About This Opportunity

Join IBHS as a Building Materials Research Director and lead the strategic direction of our laboratory operations while advancing applied research on severe convective storms. This is a unique dual-focus role that combines hands-on laboratory leadership (70%) with active scientific research and innovation (30%). You'll manage complex operations that balance competing demands—staff capacity, equipment availability, research priorities, and compliance requirements—while driving breakthroughs in how buildings withstand hail, straight-line wind, and tornado hazards.

This role is ideal for a scientist-leader who thrives at the intersection of operational excellence and scientific discovery, and who can translate atmospheric hazards into defensible building performance standards.

Plan and manage building materials laboratory throughput while strategically balancing:

• Staff capacity and skill development
• Equipment availability and utilization
• Sample preparation constraints
• Research versus compliance testing priorities

Core Expectations:

• Participate in experiment planning, execution, and quality control/assurance to ensure scientific rigor
• Establish predictable delivery timelines that stakeholders can rely on
• Develop transparent capacity planning tools and forecasting models
• Determine explicit tradeoffs between speed, scientific rigor, uncertainty, and quality—and communicate these decisions clearly

Establish and enforce repeatable test protocols while preserving the scientific flexibility needed for innovation. Clearly differentiate between:

• Compliance testing and product-based outputs versus exploratory research testing
• Exploratory workflows versus production workflows

Oversee maintenance, calibration, and lifecycle planning of building materials laboratory equipment to maximize uptime and research capability.

Key Expectations:

• Understand how equipment limitations define experimental validity and inform research design
• Reduce downtime through preventive maintenance systems and proactive monitoring
• Develop multi-year capital planning aligned with research strategy
• Ensure infrastructure investments support long-term severe storm research goals

• Build a high-performing laboratory team by mentoring entry-level staff scientists, operators, and specialist technicians
• Establish clear performance expectations by role
• Cross-train staff without diluting domain expertise
• Coach staff to understand why procedures exist, not just how to perform them
• Maintain scientific integrity while building operational discipline

Lead components of experimental and analytics-based research programs advancing applied science on severe convective storms—including hail, straight-line wind, and tornado-related hazards—and their interaction with residential and commercial construction systems.

Scientific & Technical Expectations:

• Design test matrices, instrumentation strategies, and structured data pipelines
• Validate experimental results using appropriate statistical methods and uncertainty quantification
• Improve existing test methods or propose new instrumentation approaches to better represent field conditions
• Communicate hazard and vulnerability concepts to IBHS members and stakeholders
• Translate atmospheric hazard characteristics into defensible material and system performance targets

Scientific Ownership:

• Author and contribute to IBHS technical reports
• Identify weaknesses in methods and propose refinements grounded in physics and field relevance
• Connect laboratory findings to IBHS product pathways, including standards development, ratings, guidance documents, and member insights
• Present findings internally to the Research Advisory Council, IBHS Board, Residential Committee, Commercial Lines Committee, and Executive Committee
• Develop peer-reviewed journal submissions and represent IBHS at external conferences and technical forums

Innovation & Systems Thinking:

• Propose…