Announcing Fall 2025 Faculty Promotions: Miriam Solis and Matt Fajkus
About Miriam Solis
Miriam Solis, Ph.D., MCP, is an Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin with Tenure. Her research draws on environmental justice theory and research to examine the role of environmental education and workforce development in the planning, design, and operation of urban infrastructure. She is a community-based participatory researcher who frequently collaborates with nonprofit organizations and government agencies. Dr. Solis is a 2020-2022 UT Austin Humanities Institute Fellow for her work on youth perspectives on racial justice and decarbonization.
Dr. Solis teaches courses on racism and the built environment. She also teaches practicums and research design, core courses in the UT School of Architecture’s Community and Regional Planning graduate student curricula. Her 2020 practicum consisted of a partnership with Austin Water to provide analysis and recommendations on how to advance racial equity through the agency’s policies and programs. The project received the American Planning Association-Texas Award for Advancing Diversity and Social Justice.
Dr. Solis is on the leadership team of Planet Texas 2050, UT’s campus-wide grand challenge research initiative. She is also a faculty fellow of the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis, a faculty affiliate of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, and a board member of the Center for American Architecture and Design. She is a former member of the City of Austin’s Climate Equity Plan Sustainable Buildings committee.
Raised in California’s Central Valley, Dr. Solis is a first-generation college graduate and the proud daughter of working-class Mexican immigrants. She received her doctorate in City and Regional Planning, as well as undergraduate degrees in Ethnic Studies and Geography, from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her faculty appointment, Dr. Solis was a Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation Environmental Fellow, and worked for the cities of San Francisco, New York, and Richmond, CA.
About Matt Fajkus
Matt Fajkus, AIA, holds a Master of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His teaching at The University of Texas School of Architecture has twice received the Outstanding Studio Teaching Award (most recently in 2023) in addition to the Cale McDowell Award for innovation and the ACSA New Faculty National Teaching Award. In 2013, Fajkus received the Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor in the University of Texas System. Fajkus has also received the Austin Under 40 Award, and he was named an “Austin Design Icon” by the Austin Business Journal.
Fajkus is the founder of Austin-based Matt Fajkus Architecture, an award-winning architecture and interiors practice that has completed 100 residential and commercial buildings to date, and earned more than 40 design awards. The practice has been recognized locally and nationally by the Texas Society of Architects, the American Institute of Architects, as well as several appearances on the AIA Austin Homes Tour. The practice was awarded multiple SARA national awards in 2024, a 2023 AIA Austin Design award, as well as a 2019 AIA National Design Award for the Westlake Dermatology Marble Falls medical office building. Matt Fajkus Architecture was selected for the Forbes Top 200 American Residential Architects list, a prestigious honor, determined by a panel with rigorous journalistic process to acknowledge the top 1% of American architects (among 18,000 vetted architectural practices).
His designs, research, and writings have been published extensively, in publications including but not limited to The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Record, Dwell Magazine, Texas Architect, Arch Daily, and Dezeen, as well as international publications such as Light in Engineering, Architecture, and the Environment, and The International Journal of Design, Nature, and Ecodynamics. Fajkus co-authored a book with Dason Whitsett, titled Architectural Science and the Sun, published by Routledge Publishers in 2018.