Nick Bruscia
Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Research Faculty, CAST
Nicholas Bruscia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. He has over a decade of experience in applied digital design media and his primary role in collaborative projects has focused on the workflow associated with the design and realization of large-scale prototypes. A strong interest in architectural geometry and enthusiasm for calculated formal and structural elegance informs much of his work with materials and fabrication processes. His collaborative work has received several international awards including three Architizer A+ Awards in the +Fabrication and +Materials categories, and Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Fabrication Award, and has been presented internationally at venues such as the Architectural Association, London; Digital Arts Museum, Berlin; University of Texas at Austin; University of Michigan; and FabCafe, Tokyo. In addition to CAST, Bruscia is a researcher within the Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotics Technology Community of Excellence (SMART CoE), and director of the recurring Japan Study Abroad summer program.
Albert Chao
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Albert Chao is an artist, architect, and tinkerer. His projects range from temporary installations to mixed-use towers with an ongoing interest in understanding the place of the individual within larger systems and networks. In 2011, he was an invited designer for Border Town, an interdisciplinary studio with other artists and architects in Toronto. His collaborative work has been exhibited at the 2011 Detroit Design Festival and the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennale. For the 2019 IASS Symposium in Barcelona, he engaged in the ecosystems of waste with the collaborative design of a temporary pavilion composed of recycled acrylic heat-formed into shell structures. For PBDW Architects, he worked on residential, commercial, and institutional projects of various scales (2012-2020) including the recently completed design and construction of a K-12 school for children with special needs. He is a licensed architect in New York State.
Randy Fernando
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Randy Fernando is an architectural designer, artist, researcher, and educator focused on the intersection of emerging advanced technologies, immersive environments, and material-focused spatial design. He is the creative director of MOV.E, a creative design agency that works towards integrating novel and experimental research into practical applications of the architectural process. These workflows promote “hacking” conventional tools for unconventional synergies that generate new realities. Current research investigates the use of EEG (electroencephalogram) headsets to assess psychological response and neurological health in various architecturally curated physical spaces and digitally manipulated virtual environments using VR (virtual reality) and AI (artificial intelligence). He also investigates micro and macro material prototypes and visualizes invisible forces (heat, sound, structural force paths, etc.) through the use of thermal imaging, 3D scanning, microscopes, digital simulations, photography/film, and rendering/animation software.
Jason Geistweidt
Assistant Professor, Media Study
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Jason Geistweidt is an artist and scholar working across the fields of sound composition, physical computing, creative coding, real-time performance systems, and installation. In his creative work he utilizes computation as a means for organizing time and space, invoking the event and creating experience. His current research interests lie in the study of media impermanence and the transitory nature of computation. In 2019 large-scale prints from his twittage project, which procedurally collages images captured from the Twitter firehose, were featured in the group show Unsettling Time at Vanderbilt University and his thoughts on the future of media study appear in the 2020 inaugural issue of MAST. His electroacoustic works have been presented at both the ICMC and NIME conferences. Geistweidt holds a Phd from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast and a Masters from The Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music at The University of Limerick. His amateur radio callsign is KD2SGY.
Shawn Lewis
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Shawn Chiki is a Canadian/American multimedia artist and educator, forever bouncing between collaborations, emerging technologies, and playful experiments. Specializing in sculptural speculative future architectural design, Chiki bridges the gap between the digital and physical worlds, notably through playful experimentation in Multi-Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments (MCVEs). Recently, Chiki’s speculative playscape designs have increasingly drawn from the evolving processes and aesthetics of generative ‘AI’. Currently leading a 3D-printing lab at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology, Chiki advocates for accessible education in creative technology for Buffalo’s youth. Their work includes the ‘Interactive Womp-Womp’ installations, transforming Buffalo’s grain silos into immersive experiences, and extends to writing, directing, and animating short films like ‘Pronoia’, celebrated at various international festivals. Chiki’s live music projection art has been showcased in over 50 locations, including the Royal Ontario Museum and the AKG in Buffalo. Through innovative use of emerging technologies like VR, AI, and 3D printing, Shawn Chiki actively works towards creating engaging, interactive playscapes that push the boundaries of architectural experimentation and sensory media.
Gabrielle Printz
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Gabrielle Printz is an architectural researcher, writer and designer based in New York. She is a co-founder of feminist architecture collaborative. f-architecture is a winner of the 2019 Architecture League Prize; their work has appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, Girls Like Us, ED, Log, Thresholds and Real Review, and at UN-HABITAT III, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Lab at Darat al Funun, the Frac Centre Val-de-Loire, and the 2019 Triennale di Milano. Gabrielle is currently working on a Ph.D. in Architecture History and Theory at Yale. Her project focuses on the cultivation of non/national “Human Resources” through the development of social infrastructure projects in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 20th century. In particular, she’s interested in how the construction and operation of hospitals, universities, and housing settlements depended on a stratified system of expatriate labor that was instrumental to the reproduction of a Saudi Arabian national body. And in general, she studies correspondances between labor, architecture, and citizenship.
Mark Shepard
Associate Professor, Architecture and Media Study
Situated Technologies Research Group
Director, CAST
Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose work investigates contemporary entanglements of technology and urban life. His most recent book, There Are No Facts: Attentive Algorithms, Extractive Data Practices and the Quantification of Everyday Life, was published by MIT Press in 2022. He is co-editor of the Situated Technologies Pamphlets Series and editor of Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture and the Future of Urban Space, published by MIT Press. He curated Toward the Sentient City, an exhibition organized by the Architectural League of New York that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city through a series of commissioned projects distributed throughout New York City. His work has been presented at museums, galleries and festivals internationally, including the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennial, the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, and the 2009 International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam. His work has been supported by The US Department of Education, The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Creative Capital, and Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, where he was a 2011-2012 Fellow.
Alex Solomon
Graduate Student, Media Study
Research Assistant, CAST
Alex Solomon is works across the fields of new media design, software development, and AI and machine learning. With CAST, Alex has worked on developing software for an interactive performance involving an autonomous vehicle driving simulator and on machine learning image classification of satellite imagery with ArcGIS. His independent work includes exploring the creative potentials of generative AI and developing intricate custom LED projects incorporating the open source hardware platforms. Alex holds an undergraduate degree in Media Arts and Technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology and is currently completing his MS in Media Arts and Sciences in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo.
Hadas Steiner
Associate Professor, Architecture
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Hadas A. Steiner is an associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, who researches cross-pollinations of technological, scientific and cultural aspects of architectural fabrication. She is at work on a manuscript, The Accidental Visitant, which studies the impact of the modern field of ornithology on architecture and the conceptualization of the built environment as an ecosystem. Steiner is the author of Beyond Archigram: The Technology of Circulation (Routledge) and her scholarship and reviews have been published in OCTOBER, Grey Room, New Geographies, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Architecture and arq.
Alumni
Name
Role
Dates
Leonardo Aranda Brito
Research Assistant
2017–2022
Omar Khan
Co-director, Associate Professor
2005–2020
Jelani Lowe
Research Assistant
2018-2019
Jordan Geiger
Assistant Professor
2009–2018
Tim Noble
Research Assistant
2018
William Baptiste
Research Assistant
2018
Mahan Mehrvarz
Research Assistant
2014–2016
