AWARDED GRANTS

2015–2020
Doctoral fellowship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (or Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, it is an institution largely supported by the German government that grants competitive scholarships to approximately 0.25 percent of the German university student population), PhD studies at Bauhaus University Weimar

2015–2021
Scholarship Andrea von Braun Foundation (support of interdisciplinary cooperation and mutual stimulation among different fields of knowledge. Included are not only academic disciplines but also the arts and crafts, cultural and social practices as well as traditional knowledge and skills), financial support for travelling and prototype fabrication, PhD studies at Bauhaus University Weimar

2008/ 2009
Trainee scholarship Leonardo da Vinci program ( a European Commission funding programme focused on the teaching and training needs of those involved in vocational education and training (VET). The programme is part of the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013 and aims to build a skilled and mobile workforce across Europe.), financial support during my internship at EMBT Arquitectos in Barcelona

2007/2008
Graduate Grant Sutor Foundation (Sponsorship for research in architecture and technology) and German Academic Scholarship Foundation, tuition fee and financial support during Master Studies at UPC, Barcelona

2003–2007
Undergraduate Grant German Academic Scholarship Foundation (or Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, it is an institution largely supported by the German government that grants competitive scholarships to approximately 0.25 percent of the German university student population), Scholar during undergraduate and graduate studies in Leipzig

2004/05
Trainee Exchange Program InWent Org (InWent represents a worldwide non-profit organisation with worldwide operations dedicated to human resource development, advanced training, and dialogue.), compensation of travelling costs and financial support during my internship in Chile

 

H2020 Research Projects in ColLaboration with R+D at McNeel Europe

Ongoing: April 2021–2025
European Commission H2020 FET OPEN-01-2018-2019-2020 – FET-Open Challenging Current Thinking, No. 964414
ECOlogical building enveLOPES: a game-changing design approach for regenerative urban ecosystems
Urbanisation constitutes a major environmental issue of the 21st century. Within cities, densification, the decrease of green open spaces, and continued reliance on grey infrastructures result in increasing separation of people from nature and decrease access to ecosystem services. This decreases the liveability of cities and reduces human well-being. Current approaches fall short in providing breakthrough solutions, because they perpetuate the human-nature dichotomy due to anthropocentric design. We propose a radical change for city development: instead of minimizing the negative impact of urbanisation on nature, we aim at urbanisation to be planned and designed such that nature – including humans – can co-evolve within the city. This vision requires a radically new integrated ecosystem approach to architecture that focuses equally on humans, plants, animals, and associated organisms such as microbiota. In ECOLOPES, we propose to develop the technology that will allow achieving this vision. We will focus on the envelope, the building enclosure. In ECOLOPES, we transform the envelope into an ecolope, a multi-species living space for four types of inhabitants, humans, plants, animals, and microbiota. ECOLOPES will develop the core technologies for designing ecolopes in a systematic way, considering the needs of all habitants. ECOLOPES will make biological knowledge available for the architectural design process, to find architectural solutions that enable synergies and limit conflicts between the inhabitants. The ecolopes designed by this multi-species approach will restore the beneficial human – nature relationships in cities. Key products of ECOLOPES are: (1) ECOLOPES Information Model Ontology that integrates ecological and architectural knowledge, data and models into a data-integrated design recommendation system; (2) ECOLOPES Computational modelling and simulation environment, that is based on the EIM Ontology, to make knowledge available for design.

Ongoing: 2019–2022
European Commission H2020 ICT-32-2018- STARTS- The Arts stimulation innovation, No. 825079
MindSpaces- Art- driven adaptive outdoors and indoors design
The EU-funded MindSpaces project aims to create a novel approach to urban and architectural design by generating dynamic and adaptive virtual reality (VR) environments to help engage users in the design process. The preferences of the users will be captured through physiological sensors (EEG, GSR etc.), and combined with their behaviour within the VR environment, the design will adapt accordingly. Improvements will be suggested by considering different modalities (emotional, behavioural and textual analysis). MindSpaces focuses on how artists can contribute to this tech-oriented design process, making it more participatory and human-oriented. Artists can help create awareness and inspire behavioural change to alter the connection that the occupants have with their built environment.

2018– April 2021
European Commission H2020 ICT-20-2016- Tools for smart digital content in the creative industries, No. 779962
V4Design- Visual and textual content re-purposing FOR(4) architecture, Design and virtual reality games, V4Design goal is to: (1) re-use textual and visual content by enabling its efficient collection from content providers and crawling from public web resources; (2) re-purpose of content by developing novel approaches for 3D reconstruction and modelling, buildings and objects localization, aesthetics and style extraction, generation of 3D objects enhanced with semantics and explanatory text descriptions and finally (3) deploy innovative architecture, design and VR game authoring applications.

2015–2018
European Commission H2020 ITN, No.642877
The InnoChain ETN network is a shared research training environment examining how advances in digital design tools challenge building culture enabling sustainable, informed and materially smart design solutions. The network aims to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers with a strong industry focus that can effect real changes in the way we think, design and build our physical environment.