TEAM KEYNOTES

Fiona Zisch (Team Co-Leader) is Programme Director on the Bartlett School of Architecture’s transdisciplinary MArch Design for Performance and Interaction at University College London. Fiona leads the research group bodyLAB and, together with Hugo Spiers, chairs the UK chapter of ANFA. Her research explores cognitive ecologies with a focus on intuition and radical (4EA) embodiment, neurorehabilitation spaces in physical and virtual – and eXtended – environments, as well as how ‘neuroarchitecture’ as transdisciplinary threshold might develop more wicked thinking.

Hugo Spiers (Team Co-Leader) is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology. He leads the UCL Spatial Cognition Research Laboratory and is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation. His research explores how our brain constructs representations of the world and uses them to recall the past, navigate the present, and imagine the future. His research team uses a range of methods, including brain imaging, neuropsychological testing, virtual reality, agent-based modeling, and single-cell recording to understand brain function and spatial cognition.

Sean Hanna is Professor of Design Computing and Director of Research at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and a member of the UCL Space Syntax Laboratory. His research is primarily in developing computational methods for dealing with complexity in design and the built environment, including the comparative modeling of space, the use of machine learning and optimization techniques for design and fabrication, and the analysis of human movement.

Kate Jeffery is a medically qualified neuroscientist who studies rats to find out how sensory information is assembled by the brain into more complex, cognitive representations of the world. Her research focuses on the “cognitive map,” which is formed by the hippocampus and associated structures and underlies our sense of direction and sense of place. She is also interested in the link between architecture, the experience of place, and the representation of space in the brain, and is researching this using virtual reality.

Sam McElhinney is Associate Professor and Programme Director of Architecture at the Canterbury School of Architecture, part of the University for the Creative Arts. He is an Architect, educator, and researcher with a particular interest in spatial cognition. He runs isovists.org, a free software platform for advanced spatial analysis.

Vittorio Gallese MD (Team Leader) and trained neurologist is Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy where he is Director of the Lab of Social Cognitive Neuroscience, Fellow at the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies in America of Columbia University, New York, USA, Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Philosophy of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, UK, and honorary member of the American College of Psychiatrists. Cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on the relation between the sensorimotor system and social cognition by investigating the neurobiological grounding of intersubjectivity, psychopathology, language, and aesthetics. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and three books.

Luca Bonini earned his degree in Psychology (2003) and Ph.D. in Neuroscience (2008) at the University of Parma, where he is now Full Professor of Psychobiology and Physiological Psychology in the Department of Medicine and Surgery. He has authored numerous scientific publications focused on the neuronal mechanisms underlying motor, perceptual, and cognitive functions of various brain regions, using the monkey as an experimental model.

In the last years, thanks to national and international collaborations and with the support of the European Research Council, he and his lab are developing new approaches for recording the activity of several individual neurons simultaneously, with chronic implants, in freely-moving animals. These latter innovations constitute the necessary premises for the neuroethological study of the neural underpinnings of natural behaviors in as much as possible close-to-natural situations, contributing to the refinement of brain research in non-human primates.

David Kirsh is currently the President of ANFA. He is a Professor & past dept chair at Cognitive Science, UCSD, and runs the Interactive Cognition Lab where the focus is on the way humans interact with the outside world, especially architectural spaces and thinking environments. He is on the research staff at Zaha Hadid Architects. From 2017-19 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture Univ College London. He received a D. Phil. from Oxford Univ in Philosophy & Cognitive Science, did post-doctoral work in Artificial Intelligence at MIT (AI Lab), and held research and Visiting Professor positions at MIT (Computer Science), Stanford Univ (Graduate School of Education, Computer Science, Music upcoming), Univ College London (UC Interactivity Lab Computer Science, Architecture), Paris Univ (Sociology, Computer Science), and was Adjunct Prof in Dance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London for many years.

Raj Patel (Team Co-Leader) is an acoustics, audio-visual, and theatre consultant, and sound artist, born in London and based in Brooklyn. He is noted for his artist collaborations and his international portfolio of projects across most sectors of the built environment, focusing on people-centric, sensory-based solutions.

He has created groundbreaking immersive tools for listening to, feeling, and visualizing the built environment during the design process, co-creating the pioneering Arup SoundLab and Arup ExperienceLab, unique tools to create accurate audio and visual renderings of 3D space, allowing clients to experience and listen to buildings before they are built as a means of enhancing the collaborative design process.

This knowledge has also been applied to conceive and create spaces specifically for the development and presentation of immersive spatial and 3D audio/video works and multimedia installations.

His collaborative works with a diverse range of artists, including Ai Weiwei, Phillip Glass, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Bjork, Nick Cave, Dough Wheeler, and James Turrell, have been presented in a range of spaces, including the Tate Modern, The Whitney, MoMA (NY), The Sydney Opera House, and The British Film Institute.

His collaborative projects with the artists Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard are notable for their pioneering use of spatial sound and include The Horror Show (2022), Ambisymphonic Bish Bosh (with Scott Walker) (2013), Soon (2011), The Death of Bunny Munro (with Nick Cave) (2009), Radio Mania and Abandoned Work (2009), and Silent Sound (2007). A Fellow at Arup, the renowned design firm, he leads multidisciplinary teams through project conception, ideation, planning, programming development, design, construction, and post-completion works.

Shane Myrbeck (Team Co-Leader) is a designer of acoustic and digital space based in Los Angeles. As a sound artist, Shane’s work explores the visceral and immersive nature of sound through spatial audio systems and architectural form; he engages its uncanny ability to transform and direct experience.

As an Associate Principal at the global architectural engineering firm Arup, he is a project design lead and valued creative mind. In addition to acoustics, audiovisual and theatre consulting work, Shane’s global role in the Arup SoundLab includes efforts in psychoacoustic and biophilic design research, acoustic simulation of architectural spaces, game engine-based virtual design, soundscaping, and new compositions. Some of Shane’s Arup work has included projects with Björk, SFMOMA, Google, the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Lou Reed, TED, SFOpera, and Refik Anadol.

His artwork has been exhibited at the Huntington Gardens, World Science Festival, Dolby Gallery, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, Goldenvoice’s Panorama Festival, Fort Mason Center, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, California Academy of Sciences, the Contemporary Jewish Museum SF, IBM Tokyo, and many other spaces. Residencies include Montalvo Arts Center, San Francisco’s Exploratorium, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Denis Sheynikhovich (Team Co-Leader) is an associate professor at the Sorbonne University and a researcher at Vision Institute, Paris. The main focus of his research concerns the neural bases of spatial memory and behavior using primarily a computational modeling approach, but also using experiments in behaving humans. He obtained his PhD under the supervision of Wulfram Gerstner in the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience at the EPFL, Switzerland, in 2007. He performed his postdoctoral research at the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR, Paris) and at the laboratory of Neurobiology of Adaptive Processes (University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris). He received Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in Engineering Sciences in 2020 at the Sorbonne University.

Maram M. Alkhachroum is an architect M.A. / M.Sc. who has worked in architecture for ten years in several countries. In 2021, she proceeded with her passion for the link between architecture and neuroscience. She obtained her master's degree at ENSAL Lyon, France, accompanied by research at UCL, London, UK. Her second master's degree in cognitive science with a neuroscience major is from the PSL master's program in Paris, France. Her research addresses the effect of aging on spatial navigation in architectural environments.

Stephen Ramanoel is Associate Professor at University of Côte d’Azur LAMHESS, Nice, France, and affiliated with the Vision Institute, Aging in Vision and Action Lab, CNRS – INSERM – Sorbonne Université. His main interests are in the impact of human aging on vision. More specifically, the impact of healthy aging on cerebral bases, in relation to visual processing and spatial cognition, using several MRI approaches. His methods include advanced MRI data processing (pre-processing and statistical modelling) as well as optimization techniques.

Angelo Arleo is Director of Research (DR2) at CNRS and a team leader at the Vision Institute, Paris, where he explores the perceptual and cognitive consequences of visual aging in humans. He is the Chairholder of the ANR–Essilor research chair SILVERSIGHT, which pioneers fundamental research on healthy visual aging, action, and autonomy to foster innovative health care developments. His research is primarily centered on the neural processes mediating multisensory integration, contextual learning, and spatial cognitive functions. His approach combines experimental neuroscience and computational modeling to cross-link different organization levels, from single cell to behavior. He received an MSc degree from the University of Mathematical Science of Milan, Italy, in 1996. He joined Wulfram Gerstner’s Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland), where he received his PhD in 2000. He did a postdoctoral training in experimental neuroscience in Alain Berthoz’s Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action at Collège de France, Paris, from 2001-2003. He worked as an associate R&D fellow at CSL Sony, Paris, from 2004 to 2006. He received his Habilitation to Direct Research (HDR) in Life Science from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, in 2005. He was appointed as a CNRS researcher in 2006. From 2007 to 2013, he directed the Adaptive NeuroComputation (ANC) group in the unit of Neurobiology of Adaptive Processes, directed by Jean Mariani, at the University Pierre & Marie Curie, in Paris. In 2012, he was appointed as a Director of Research at CNRS. In 2014, he joined the Vision Institute, directed by José-Alain Sahel, as the head of the new Aging in Vision and Action research lab.

Zakaria Djebbara (Team Leader) is a postdoc researcher in the field of architecture and cognitive neuroscience at Aalborg University. He is a pioneer in the combination of Mobile Brain/Body Imaging and Virtual/Augmented Reality. His research primarily revolves around investigating sensorimotor responses relative to environmental characteristics, with a particular emphasis on the temporal aspects of phenomenology in architecture. By integrating various disciplines such as computational phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and ecological psychology, Zak endeavors to cultivate a profound comprehension of the intricate relationship between the brain and the built environment through an experimental approach.

Lars Brorson Fich graduated as an architect in 1984, and has worked as a practicing architect until 2008, from 1998 – 2008 as a partner. During this period, he has designed well over 100 build projects, ranging from a museum to residential, commercial and hospital projects. In 2008 he became associate professor in architecture at AAU, where he leads a project on how the design of spaces influences the effects of stress.

Dylan Chau Huynh: is an Urban Designer currently holding the position of Research Assistant at the department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University. His research is on affordances in relation to human physiological and psychological response to space.

Dr. Deborah Wingler(Team Leader) is Principal and Research Practice Director for Health & Experience at HKS where she collaborates with research and design teams to develop and implement research initiatives that drive innovation and achieve a measurable impact across the healthcare practice, globally. She also holds an appointment as Adjunct Faculty in the School of Architecture at Clemson University. Through her research, Deborah has had the opportunity to work with some of the most forward-thinking Fortune 500 companies, healthcare organizations, manufacturers, and design firms in the industry to support their respective research agendas. Deborah holds several industry and academic awards. Most recently she was awarded HCD 10 researcher of the year for 2022 by Healthcare Design Magazine.

Dr. Upali Nanda is Principal and Global Director of Research for HKS, an international architectural firm where she is responsible for spearheading and implementing research projects globally. She also teaches as Associate Professor of Practice at the Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and serves as the Executive Director for the non-profit Center for Advanced Design Research and Education. Her award-winning research around human health and wellbeing, neuroscience and architecture, and outcome-driven design has been widely published. In 2018, she was honored by Architectural Record with the Women in Architecture Innovator Award. Her research is situated at the intersection of human perception and design, focused on linking design to outcomes.

Dr. Michal Gath-Morad (Team Leader) is a registered architect and cognitive scientist, conducting her postdoctoral research in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and the Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London. She holds a BArch and an MSc in architecture (Summa Cum Laude) from the Technion, and a PhD in cognitive science from ETH Zurich. Her interdisciplinary research employs methods from cognitive neuroscience to tackle architectural design challenges for the generation of inclusive and legible built environments, with a particular focus on healthcare environments. The three major themes of her past and current research are understanding how architecture affects spatial cognition, translating behavioral findings to applied design tools, and analyzing how the use of evidence affects architects’ cognition, design communication, and design outcomes. To link her research with architectural design praxis and pedagogy, Michal holds a visiting researcher position in the urban design team at Foster + Partners in London and is a lecturer at ETH Zurich since 2019, where she leads a graduate module on evidence-based design in architecture.

Christoph Hölscher is a professor of Cognitive Science at ETH Zurich since 2013. At the Singapore-​ETH Centre (SEC), he is Director of the Future Resilient Systems (FRS) programme and Principal Investigator of the 'Interactions with New Technology and Financial Systems' research module in FRS, as well as collaborator for the 'Estimating Economic Losses from Cascading Infrastructure Disruptions' project in FRS. He is involved in the Future Cities Lab Global, another SEC programme, as Co-​Investigator of 'Dense and Green Cities' and 'A Neuroscientific investigation of the Interaction between Crowdedness and Environment typology' (NICE). Prof. Hoelscher was previously assistant and extra-​curricular professor at the Center for Cognitive Science in the University of Freiburg, Germany. He received his Doctorate (2000) and Habilitation (2009) in Psychology at the University of Freiburg. He was a project manager in the IT industry from 2000-​2003, specializing in user-​adaptive systems and usability.

Panos Mavros is Assistant Professor in Ergonomics, Design and Digital technologies at Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris. He studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, Digital Media at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He completed his PhD at The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London, where he specialized in the perception and experience of urban spaces, focusing on spatial cognition research, and the use of psychophysiological methods, such as mobile EEG, as a way to understand the interaction between people and the environment. Previously he worked as a postdoctoral researcher for several years at the Future Cities Laboratory of the Singapore-ETH Centre, conducting research on the topic of Cognition Perception and Behaviour in Urban Environments. His research interests are the study of how people interact with their environments, in terms of cognition and behavior, and how to translate research into design practices.

Ruth Conroy Dalton is a British architect, author, and Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University. She has authored or contributed to more than 200 publications. She is an expert in space syntax analysis, pedestrian movement, and wayfinding and a world-leading authority on the overlap between architecture and spatial cognition. As a licensed architect, she has worked for Foster and Partners and Sheppard Robson Architects, and key projects upon which she has worked include the Carré d'Art de Nîmes in France and the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia in Spain. She has taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Northumbria University, where she was Head of Department for the Architecture and Built Environment Department, the first woman to hold the post. In 2019, she became the Inaugural/Founding Professor of Architecture and the first Head of the Lancaster School of Architecture at Lancaster University, before returning to Northumbria University in 2022.