Evangelos Pantazis / Ph.D. Candidate
Bio: Evangelos Pantazis is currently pursuing a PhD at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, supervised Dr. David Gerber. His work lies on the intersection of architecture and engineering and computational modeling and focuses on the use of Multi Agent Systems for building design. Evangelos holds a Masters of Advanced studies in the field of Computer Aided Architectural Design from the ETH in Zurich (2012). He received his Diploma in Architecture with honors from Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki (2010), and has also graduated from the MOKUME jewelry design school in 2007, where he was trained as a jeweler. Professionally, Evangelos has gained experience in several international offices, including Graft Architects in Berlin and Studio Pei Zhu in Beijing. Soon after, he co-founded Topotheque design office, a studio that engages computational design with various tangent disciplines, including architecture, furniture/product design and graphics art. His Ph.D. Research is focusing on the integration of non-linear generative design strategies with environmental and structural analyses as well as construction simulation for architectural purposes.
Research Focus: Form Finding, Generative Design, Agent Based Modeling, Digital Fabrication, Robotic Fabrication
Contact: epantazi@usc.edu
Personal Website: www.topotheque.com
Dr. David Jason Gerber / Assistant Professor
Bio: In 2009 Dr. Gerber was appointed Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California. He has since been awarded a courtesy joint appointment at USC’s Viterbi School of engineering. Upon joining the USC faculty he developed and taught primarily as a design studio and design technology professor in architecture for both undergraduate and graduate core and electives and curriculum in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate sequence. Prior to joining the USC faculty Dr. Gerber was full time faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture from 2006-2009. Dr. Gerber has also taught at UCLA’s school of architecture and urban design, the AA’s DRL graduate program as a technical tutor, the Laboratory for Design Media at the EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland, Stanford University’s CEE department as a guest instructor, and the Tecnologico de Monterrey School of Architecture, Mexico. He is a frequent instructor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and lectures globally on architecture, digital practice, and design technology. David Gerber received his undergraduate architectural education at the University of California Berkeley (Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, 1996). He completed his first professional degree at the Design Research Laboratory of the Architectural Association in London (Master of Architecture, 2000), his post professional research degree (Master of Design Studies, 2003) and his Doctoral studies (Doctor of Design, June 2007) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Research Focus: computer aided design, design computing, domain integration, interactivity and system intelligence, digital media and fabrication, multi-objective design optimization and design agency.
Contact: djgerber@post.harvard.edu
Personal Website: http://www.djgerber.com/
Arsalan Heydarian / Assistant Professor
Bio: Arsalan is currently a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a concentration on Construction Engineering and Management. Arsalan earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Virginia Tech (2010 and 2012 respectively) where he garnished several awards including the Undergraduate Vecellio Scholarship, Virginia Tech 2010 Paul E. Torgersen Research Excellence Award, the 2010 top three best research poster award at Virginia Tech’s CEE department, and the top graduate CMAA student scholarship. During his graduate study at Virginia Tech, he was a teaching assistant for the Construction Engineering Management for two years. Arsalan’s Master’s thesis was focused on automated equipment action recognition for productivity analysis of construction operations. His current research focuses on integrating data extraction, visualization techniques, and user interactive environments.
Research Focus: User interactive environments, 3D visualization, Virtual Reality (VR), Immersive and Responsive Environments (IVE)
Contact: heydaria@usc.edu
Personal Website: http://www.arsalanheydarian.com/
Leandro Marcolino / Assistant Professor
Bio: Leandro Soriano Marcolino is a lecturer (assistant professor) at Lancaster University. He obtained his doctorate degree at University of Southern California (USC), advised by Milind Tambe. He has published in several key conferences in AI, robotics and machine learning, such as AAAI, AAMAS, IJCAI, NIPS, ICRA and IROS. He received the best dissertation and the best research assistant award from the Computer Science Department at USC, had a paper nominated for best paper from the leading multi-agent conference AAMAS, and had his undergraduate work selected as the best in the nation by the Brazilian Computer Science Society. Leandro completed his masters degree in Japan (with the highly-competitive Monbukagakusho scholarship) and his undergraduate degree in Brazil at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (receiving a gold medal for finishing the course with the highest grades). His research interests are multi-agent teamwork, machine learning, robotics; with emphasis on coordination and collaboration. Leandro has conducted this research in the context of a variety of domains, such as swarm robotics, computer Go, social networks, bioinformatics and architectural design.
Research Focus: Multi Agent Systems, Coordination, Collaboration, Agent Team Formation
Contact: l.marcolino@lancaster.ac.uk
Personal Website: LeandroSoriano
Alan Wang / Ph.D. Student
Bio: Alan Wang is a senior at the University of Southern California, majoring in architecture with a minor in computer security… because he likes to solve a good puzzle. Away from sleepless nights in studio, Alan enjoys playing video games, judo, and occasionally the piano.
Contact: alanwang@usc.edu
Personal Website: alanwang
Joao P. Carneiro / Ph. D. Student
Bio: Joao Pedro Carneiro earned his Bachelor’s from Universidade de Amazonia (UNAMA) back on Brazil in Civil Engineering. He is currently working with Immersive Virtual Environment and Augmented Reality to improve occupants’ knowledge and understanding of the built environment. As part of his research and studies, Joao is trying to investigate new ways to increase occupants awareness about the work environment in order to improve their decision making process. He is currently working in helping occupants to become more energy efficient by improving their knowledge and understanding of the environment and its impact on it. At the same time, Joao is interested in working with information and data visualization, specifically high dimensional data visualization in new mediums, such as virtual and augmented reality mediums. Another research interesting of him, is the integration of sensor data and big data analysis to improve decision making process of facility managers, designers and construction managers. Recently, Joao have worked with multiple coding languages and software such as: Unity, 3Ds Max, Revit, C#, Javascript, D3.js, Python and R.
Research Focus: User interactive environments, 3D visualization, virtual reality, building information modeling
Contact: jcarneir@usc.edu Personal Website: https://github.com/jpdrcarneiro
Alumni
Nick Morof / Undergrad Arch Student
Bio: Nicholas Morof is a 22-year-old Architecture student at the University of Southern California. He just completed his fourth year of USC's five-year program. He is currently taking a leave of absence to work in Tokyo at Shigeru Ban Architects for three months, then Paris at Moreau Kusunoki Architectes for an entire year. He was born in Los Angeles, California, and moved to Chicago, IL when he was ten years old. Before High School, Nicholas became interested in architecture while canoeing and camping throughout the Boundary Waters and Quetico because of the strength, protection, and mobility of his tent. In high school, Nicholas played the trombone in the Highland Park High School Wind Symphony as well as the Jazz Ensemble. Through music, Nicholas was able to further appreciate the beauty and influence of Architecture when the Wind Symphony band was invited to tour and compete in cathedrals across various European countries during his sophomore and junior years of high school. In addition to the two bands he was part of in high school, Nicholas designed and maintained a photography website for one year, played in the Marching Band, played soccer, and also played varsity tennis. Nicholas is an avid learner and is excited to be studying in a career full of creativity, competition, and one with no right answers. Outside of school, Nicholas enjoys to write code, hike, play tennis, and surf.
Courses: ARCH499 SS16
Contact: morof@usc.edu
Website: nicholasmorof.com
Francine Ngo / Master Arch Student
Courses: Graduate Research Assistant Fall 2015
Contact: frankyngo@icloud.com
Yuze Liu / Master Arch. Student
Courses: ARCH599 SS15
Brian Herrera / Undergraduate CS Student
Courses: Research Assistant Fall 2015
Contact: bherrera22@toromail.csudh.edu
Punit Das / Master Arch Student
Bio: Architecture is a design form that evolves from ideas in the mind to masterpieces in reality. However, this manifestation cannot take place in isolation of an architect; it has to be integrated with the pragmatism of engineering and economics. With this perspective, I am striving to become an Architect using my background in Architecture and Engineering.
I am currently in the final semester of my Master of Architecture degree at University of Southern California. Throughout my career, I have been engaged in academic and professional projects in Architecture and Engineering, beginning from my Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering at Pennsylvania State University to practicing as a Structural Engineer and now completing my Master’s at USC. With these interdisciplinary experiences, I am excited and looking forward to contributing and growing towards a well-rounded architect.
Courses: ARCH793b Fall 2015
Rheseok Kim / Master Arch. Student
Bio: Rhe Seok Kim is currently a designer in Stantec at Irvine, CA. Rhe earned his Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Iowa State University and Master's degree in Architecture from University of Southern California. In practice, he has been worked in US; Gensler and DesignARC and South Korea; H.N.CM and Ivan Pazos Architect. Based on his interests, he keeps investigating some translations tools that will allow Revit to be used during conceptual design phases for illustrating designs with free-form geometry made in Rhino.
Courses: ARCH599 SS15
Contact: rheseokkim@gmail.com
Ye Tian / Master CS Student
Bio: I am Software Engineer and Apprentice in Philosophy, currently working as software engineer for Amazon.
Courses: Graduate Research Assistant Summer 2014
Contact: tt.willturner@gmail.com
Alejandro Medina / Master Arch. Student
Bio: Alejandro Medina is a multidisciplinary artist and designer interested in geometrical abstraction, the design of systems of thinking and the ephemerality of nature. Approaching art-making as science, his process often involves various layers of research and a concern for material investigation. Building on his studies in architecture and cinematography, his work lies between the crossing points of different mediums. Incorporating distinct technologies and materials in order to arrive at constantly new and exciting results. Medina draws inspiration from his childhood encounters with nature. Born and raised in Guatemala, he grew up very close to the natural world. He is especially interested in the geometric peculiarities that occur under extreme environmental conditions. In the case of Guatemala: the tropics (environments such as the rainforest and coral reef). He currently resides in Los Angeles where he studies at the University of Southern California (USC). His first public exhibition was during the summer of 2010 at the inaugural Guatephoto Festival, becoming one of the youngest artists to exhibit his work in Guatemala’s Museum of Modern Art. He has now exhibited in several other national exhibitions and internationally at festivals in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.
Courses: Undergraduate Research Assistant Summer 2015
Contact: jamedina@usc.edu
Jingbo Yan/ Master Arch. Student
Bio: Jingbo Yan is a Los Angeles based Designer. Jingbo's Research & Practice focus on Discrete Design, Generative Interface, Digital Fabrication, and Vedio Game. He received his Master of Architecture degree in University of Southern California. Jingbo has worked in a wide range of architectural offices including UNStudio (Amsterdam), MAD Architects (Beijing), Serie Architects (Beijing) and Archimorphic (Los Angeles). He also worked for Plethora-project (Los Angeles) as a game artist. Jingbo's work has been exhibited in Los Angeles "Hidden Artifacts" Exhibtion and USC Spring Exhibition.
Courses: ARCH599 SS15
Contact: yan_jingbo@hotmail.com
Website: http://yanjingbo.com/
Kevin Daley / Undergraduate CS Student
Courses: Research Assistant Fall 2015
Contact: kevin.daley1337@gmail.com