Rana El-Dabaa is a RIBA Associate member and an Assistant Lecturer at the department of Architecture and Environmental design at Arab Academy for Science and Technology. She also a Research Assistant at the Building Sciences Lab, American University in Cairo and a PhD candidate at Ain-Shams University. Her inter-disciplinary research includes innovative, low-cost and material-efficient adaptive building facades that focuses on the interaction between geometry, elasticity and environmental performance to reduce energy consumption. Rana`s research is focused on biological structures as inspiration for developing programmable materials and utilising it in novel passive responsive actuators and mechanisms.