Annie Pearce

Role and Background

Dr. Annie Pearce serves as Associate Professor for Building Construction and the Director of Virginia Tech’s BioBuild Interdisciplinary Graduate Program. She joined Virginia Tech in 2006.

Dr. Pearce’s teaching focuses on sustainable facilities and infrastructure systems. In her current role, Dr. Pearce brings the latest green building methods, technologies, and best practices to the classroom.  Her specific areas of interest include metrics of sustainability for built facilities, green building materials and systems, cost modeling to support sustainability implementation, and in situ performance of sustainable facility technologies.

Throughout her career, Dr. Pearce has worked with practitioners in both the public and private sectors to implement sustainability as part of building planning, design, construction, and operations. She has served as a principal investigator for more than $3.5 million in research related to sustainable facilities and infrastructure for sponsors including the U.S. Army, Air Force, Naval Facilities Command, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Army Environmental Policy Institute, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and multiple private corporations and state agencies. 

Dr. Pearce presently serves as a Planning Commissioner and Secretary of the Commission for her hometown of Radford, VA and on the Board of Directors for the New River Valley Habitat for Humanity.

Previously, Dr. Pearce served as a Senior Research Engineer for the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Head, Sustainable Facilities and Infrastructure Branch within the Safety, Health, and Environmental Technologies Division and the Research Director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development before joining the Myers-Lawson School of Construction.

Education

Dr. Pearce holds a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with research on prioritizing facility improvement options to improve built environment sustainability, an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech, with research on the development of an artificial neural network model for conceptual construction cost estimating, and a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University with research on video-based vehicle detection using artificial neural networks. She is a Certified Permaculture Designer, a Certified Planning Commissioner, and LEED Accredited Professional.