Alex O’Briant is a leading design voice and 15-year veteran of the firm, working across typologies, scales and geographies. The power architects wield over an unsuspecting public keeps him awake at night, but the potential for architecture to positively impact human lives gets him going in the morning. His recent work includes two laboratories at Purdue University—the Engineering FlexLab and the STEM Teaching Lab—three major projects at the University of Texas at Austin—the Engineering Education and Research Center and the Gary L. Thomas Energy Engineering Building for the Cockrell School of Engineering and Robert B. Rowling Hall for the McCombs School of Business—and a new high school for Seoul Foreign School in South Korea. Alex directs Ennead’s Center for Education, focusing on innovation in Higher Education and K-12 work and how design can foster collaborative communities of learning.