Dr. Berok Khoshnevis is the Louise L. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California. Through his inventive research activities, Dr. Khoshnevis has made many useful inventions and innovations in different domains including robotics, biomedical, oil and gas, renewable energy, fabrication, construction, and space systems. His automated construction invention, Contour Crafting, is the pioneering construction-scale 3D printing technology and is regarded as a promising approach for planetary construction of human outposts. NASA awarded Contour Crafting the Grand Prize among 1000+ globally competing technologies in 2014. In 2016 another invention of Khoshnevis, SSS, received the top NASA prize in another international competition on in-space fabrication technologies. He was recognized in 2017 by the Connected World magazine as one of ten academic pioneers in the Internet of Things (IoT). He is a National Academy of Engineering member, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. He is also the Founder of Contour Crafting Corporation. CC Corp was recently recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) as the pioneering and most innovative company in the field, granting it the Pankow Industry Innovation Award.
Every year, countless new innovations are introduced; however, truly disruptive technologies arise only rarely. When they do, they often create groundbreaking impacts and trigger a cascade of transformative changes across their application domains. This presentation offers an exploration of construction 3D printing technology—its origins, evolution, and envisioned future—as recounted by the speaker, a pioneer who embarked on this journey three decades ago. What started as a mere curiosity has blossomed into an entirely new industry with immense promise in the construction sector. The talk will provide a historical overview, review current advancements, and examine future prospects, focusing on construction 3D printing applications across terrestrial, underwater, and planetary environments with a focus on academic research opportunities.