Current Ph.D. Students

Manal Anis

Climate-adaptive shading, daylight, optimization, shape-memory alloy, Nitinol

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

Manal Anis, LEED AP BD+C, is a PhD candidate in Architecture in the Technology and Environment track. She received her M.S. in Architecture from Pennsylvania State University and her B.Arch from BUET, Bangladesh. She previously worked as a Designer at WRNS Studio, CA, and as a Student Fellow at Gensler, where she worked on identifying the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) impacting the future of Professional Services design in a post-COVID world. Manal is currently developing a climate-adaptive shading system using shape-memory alloy and optimizing its performance using Machine Learning. Her work bridges architecture, materiality, and computation, and has been awarded the Robert F Mast Fellowship and the William Henry Meyer Scholarship.

Read more here.

Credit: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

Susan Ask

Climate consequences of decisions about landscapes and land use

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Susan Ask is a first-year doctoral student in Landscape Architecture. She is interested in how the decisions we make about landscapes can affect—and are affected by—climate change. Her work has always focused on sustainability; she founded a sustainability-focused non-profit that combines science education with community engagement. Previously, Susan worked as a university extension agent in Chicago, a conservation land manager in Maine, and a field ecologist in other infinitely fascinating places.

She received an M.E.S. in Ecosystem Science and Management from Yale University and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Kansas. Read more about Susan.

Credit: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

Shreyonti Chakraborty

Crowding, family functioning, space scarcity

Advisor: Dr. Bill Sullivan

Shreyonti Chakraborty is an architect and aspiring researcher from India. After graduating with a B.Arch. from Jadavpur University and an MS from Penn State University, she spent some time working for architecture firms in New England. Eventually, she chose to return to research with a focus on the effects of urban living conditions on the psychological and relational well-being of human beings. Currently, she is most interested in the effects of crowding on social interactions. She is also pursuing a minor at the HDFS department.

Alexandre Champagne

Applied-philosophy in design, precarity in urban context, modernity

Advisor: Prof. David L. Hays

Alexandre Champagne is a Ph.D. candidate in Landscape Architecture. After a few years as a financial analyst, he pursued his education and received an MLA from Cornell University. With the aim of exploring how design professionals could have broader impacts on urban social well-being, he entered the Ph.D. program with a focus on applied-philosophy. Based on postmodern views of human existence in regards to design, fiction, and tomorrow’s present, he argues that the design field should embrace a wider scope of thinking and speculate on creating the “good life” (Ricœur, 1990).

Soumya Dasgupta

Neoliberal Developmentalism, Digital Technocracy, Global South, South Asia

Dissertation: Design Empire: Transformations of Architectural Productions in Urban India after 1991.

Advisor: Dr. D. Fairchild Ruggles

Soumya (Shoumo) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture (History and Theory). He has a Master’s in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and a B.Arch. from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Kolkata, India. His scholarly interests include neoliberal developmentalism, digital technocracy, Global South, and South Asia. His Ph.D. dissertation broadly explores the contested systems of architectural productions in 21st- century urban India. He has presented his research at academic conferences, including the SAH,

ACSA, and IASTE, as well as Ph.D. conferences at Georgia Tech, AA London, and UCLA. Soumya is an awardee of the Humanities Research Institute Graduate Fellowship for 2023-24 and a former recipient of the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship. He also received the Nicholson Fellowship to attend the School of Criticism and Theory Summer Program, Cornell University. Soumya loves teaching and has worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for graduate-level history, theory, and design courses in Architecture.

Stephen Ferroni

Urbanism, Urban regeneration, History of architecture

Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Bross

Keun Jang

KeunH Jang

Building Energy Performance Simulation, Architectural Design Automation, 2D Image Retrieval, Automated Design Evaluation

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

KeunH Jang is a PhD Candidate in Architecture Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, specializing in developing 2D image retrieval systems that convert sketches into 3D CAD models for architectural design and energy simulations. He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Engineering

from Kangwon National University, South Korea. KeunH is currently a Building Performance Consultant at Tentmaker ArchEngineers, Inc., a nonprofit organization registered in Maryland that supports missionaries worldwide with architecture-related projects and assists local churches with construction efforts, particularly those with limited resources. His research expertise spans computational fluid dynamics and energy-efficient design.

You-Jeong Kim

Building Energy Modeling, Building Data Analysis, Data-Driven Modeling

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

You-Jeong is a Ph.D. student in Architecture, holding both an M.S. and a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from Ewha Womans University. Her research focuses on assessing the energy performance of existing buildings through data-driven approaches. Currently, she is working on integrating inverse energy modeling with uncertainty analysis to develop a more efficient tool for post-occupancy energy evaluation.

Read more here.

Sun Kwon

Building Energy Simulation and Building Performance Evaluation, 3D building Information modeling(BIM, IFC), reconstruction and building data analysis

Advisor: Dr. Richard Karl Strand

Sun is a Ph.D. candidate in Architecture. She earned a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from Hanyang University and an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Seoul National University, focusing on indoor building data updates based on AR and AI technology. She completed the Intensive Program in Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University as a visiting researcher in the Department of Computer Science.

She has always been interested in researching the application of modern computer technologies, such as machine learning, to architecture. She is currently researching using artificial intelligence technology to scale up from building- to city-level energy simulations.

Read more here.

Siqi Lai

Machine Learning, Social Media Data, Green Space, Spatial Analysis

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Siqi Lai is a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on applying machine learning in urban green space analysis. As a graduate, she studied Geospatial Analysis at Tongji University. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of natural language
processing and urban park perceptions, particularly in understanding park visitor sentiments and enhancing their satisfaction.

Read more here.

Kyung-Kuhn Lee

East Asian landscape tradition, Theories of contemporary landscape architecture

Advisor: Dr. David L. Hays

Kyung-Kuhn Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He finished his Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on the ecological legibility of designed landscapes. His research examines landscape as a discursive field of cultural identity, socio-ecological value, and disciplinary interests, particularly in the East Asian context. His dissertation presents a new history of the Korean Confucian Academies by foregrounding their marginalized landscapes, which have supported contradictory ideas of nature, landscape, and heritage during the process of rapid westernization. Kuhn has been a Fulbright Scholar since 2016 and won the Graduate College Dissertation Completion Fellowship in 2021.

Yuan Liao

Scissor-based deployable structures, geometric design, kinematics

Advisor: Dr. Sudarshan Krishnan

Yuan Liao is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at the School of Architecture. He is a student member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He holds an M.Arch degree from UIUC and a B.A. degree from China Academy of Art. His current research focuses on transformable structures and their architectural/engineering applications, such as post-disaster shelters, deployable domes, and space antennas. His works have been published in academic journals and conferences. In the field of architectural design, Yuan is the winner of the Chicago Award in Architecture competition (AIA), the 2018 SARAs National Design Award, and the Graduate Design Excellence Award. Read more about Yuan.

Lassamon Maitrameet

Cultural Landscape, Southeast Asian Study, Laos, Spirit Ontology, Ethnography, UNESCO World Heritage

Advisor: Dr. Lynne Dearborn

Lassamon Maitreemit is a research scholar from Thailand pursuing doctoral study in Landscape Architecture under the track of Social/Behavior Study. Her interest is in the cultural landscape of Southeast Asia as shaped and defined from within the local culture.

Maitreemit’s approach to research comes from the theoretical and methodological background in Environment Behavior Study, grounded in recent socio-cultural movement of ontological diversity. Apart from being a student at UIUC, she teaches full-time at the Division of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Silpakorn University, Thailand. Read more here.

Bhaswati Mukherjee

Daylighting, Circadian Rhythm, Lighting Metrics

Dissertation: Effects of controlled lighting on the sleep, cognitive performance and mood of office workers: Application of simulation-based daylighting metric for circadian health.

Advisor: Dr. Mohamed Boubekri

Bhaswati Mukherjee is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Architecture, whose research interest lies in investigating how the built environment can be designed to improve the health and wellbeing of its occupants. Her research focuses on investigating the impacts of daylighting on the circadian rhythm of office workers. She is also working on developing lighting metrics that take circadian health into account and provide design guidelines for healthy indoor lighting. She has a Master of Architecture from the University of Kansas with a Health and Wellness certificate, and a Bachelor of Architecture from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, India.

Junyoung Myung

Transnational immigrant placemaking, historic preservation

Advisor: Dr. John Stallmeyer

Junyoung Myung is a Ph.D. candidate (History and Theory track), architect and urban researcher at the Illinois School of Architecture. His current research engages with history and theory of transnational architecture and urbanism; the relationship between cultural change and built environment; placemaking by immigrant communities; and public history and collective memory. More specifically, Junyoung’s studies aim to investigate how immigrants perceive public space in different localities and how transnational placemaking affects ethnic community formation and development in urban and suburban areas through the lens of transnational urbanism and socio-spatial theories and practices. Read more about Junyoung.

Bo Pang

Urban resilience, spatial analysis, urban flooding and land use and land change

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

As a third-year doctoral student in Landscape Architecture, Pang works with Professor Brian Deal in the Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model lab. She focuses on exploring the role of landscape intervention in urban flood management under climate change. Bo received her Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor of Arts in Cinematography & Production (Lighting Art direction) from the Communication University of China.

Aparajita Santra

Gender and urban space, Intersectional feminisms, Transnational mobilities, Spatial agency

Advisor: Dr. John Stallmeyer

Aparajita is a PhD candidate in the History and Theory track in the department. She has dual graduate minors in Gender Relations in International Development and Gender and Women’s Studies. She did her undergraduate degree in Architecture and a master’s degree in Urban Design, both from India. Aparajita’s research interests are global-south urbanism, spatial justice, urban mobilities and feminist sociology. Her lived experiences and background shape her understanding of the unevenness in spatial design of cities as manifestations of structural inequalities, systemic oppression, and injustice. Her doctoral dissertation focused on studying the spatial negotiations of working-class women of lower-castes in Kolkata, India uses the lenses of intersectionality and spatial justice. Her research builds on urban sociology, feminist geography, sociology of gender and sexuality, postcolonial and transnational feminisms and explores the placemaking practices enacted by the minoritized women from the urban margins of Kolkata, India.

Nubras Samayeen

Architecture of the Land: Louis I. Kahn’s National Assembly Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Advisor: Dr. D. F. Ruggles

Nubras Samayeen is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint program of Landscape Architecture and Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation titled “Architecture of the Land” investigates the construction of national identity through built-environment. After her undergraduate degree in architecture, she completed dual master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with distinction. She worked in New York and Washington DC as an architect and taught at Howard University. Her research has been supported and enriched by the Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship (Harvard University), Kennedy Travel Fellowship, Feil Travel Awards, AAUW International Fellowship, Humanities Research Institute Fellowship, Illinois Dissertation Completion Fellowship and Nicholson Fellowship.

Her publications include “Re-Constructing ’71: The Visual Landscape of Bangladeshi Nationalism Today,” “Post-71: Photographic Ambivalences, Archives, and the Construction of a National Identity of Bangladesh,” “Space to Breathe: George Floyd, BLM plaza and the Monumentalization of Divided American Urban landscapes,” “A Tale of Two Cities: Dhaka’s Urban Imaginary in 21st Century,” and “The Landscape of 1971: Museums, Memories, and the Aesthetics of Bangladeshi Nationalism.” She
received the Best Student Research Award of 2023 from CELA (Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture), the paramount academic body of landscape architecture.

Aysenur Senel

Islamic Architecture, Ottoman Architecture, Architectural Patronage of Women, Gender Politics, Women’s Agency, Center and Periphery

Advisor: Dr. D. F. Ruggles

Aysenur Senel is a PhD student in Architecture with a concentration in History and Theory. She is also pursuing a graduate minor in The Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program. She received her Master of Science in Architecture degree and Bachelor of Architecture degree with a Minor in Graphic Design from Bilkent University, Turkey. During her time there, she investigated the changing role of women and their relation to the production of mosque spaces. Currently, she continues her studies on Islamic Architecture and women’s agency in spatial production, with a focus on Ottoman history.

Angelina Tsoukala

Cultural integration within residential environments

Advisor: Dr. Lynne Dearborn

Angelina Tsoukala is originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. She graduated in 2012 from the University of Brighton with a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and obtained her Master of Science degree in Architecture and Engineering from Politecnico di Milano while maintaining a high merits scholarship. There, she completed her thesis on the design of an efficient refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece. Since 2015 she has worked with several NGOs and the International Organization for Migration on projects for emergency sheltering of vulnerable populations within the refugee crisis. She joined University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019.

Ana Valderrama

Entanglements among bodies, materials, lands, and subjectivities.

ADVISOR: DR. DAVID HAYS

Valderrama is an Architect (UNR), Landscape Architect (UIUC), and PhD Candidate (UIUC) in the Landscape Architecture Program’s Theory track. Her dissertation explores correlations between body-artefact assemblages and socio-political dynamics in Latin American Peripheries.

She is a Full Professor (UNR) since 2010 and has served as Associate Dean (UNR), Founder and Head of MLA Program (UNR), Director of Innovation in Science and Technology (UNR), Head of public projects and plans at Rosario Planning Secretary. In 2001, I founded the group Matéricos Periféricos, a civil organization dedicated to contributing to Latin American peripheries’ spatial, environmental, and social equity. She has been a visiting professor and lecturer in the US, Europe, and Latin America, and author of several publications, including the books Poéticas Colectivas (Bismanediciones, 2019) and Matéricos Periféricos 15 “Diez Años del Taller Valderrama” (UNR Editora, 2021).

Valderrama has received more than 20 prizes, including the preselection to the 2022 Inclusion Award from the New York City Architecture Biennial, and the BIAU 2022 Prize “Inhabiting the margins.” She has received academic scholarships, grants, and fellowships, such as the Fulbright Scholarship 2011-2013, the Tinker 2021 and 2022, the Graham Foundation Grant 2022, and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship UIUC in 2024-2025.

Read more here.

Taisuke Wakabayashi

Taisuke Loren Wakabayashi

Nuclear Infrastructures and Landscapes, Design-thinking, Techno-politics, Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal

Advisor: Dr. David Hays

Tai is a PhD student in the Department of Landscape Architecture, holding a master’s degree in Architecture and a bachelor’s degree in English. Currently a research assistant at the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, his research explores the profound role of design thinking in the emergence of nuclear infrastructures and landscapes, encompassing both built and unbuilt environments of the 20th and 21st centuries. These environments, born from military experiments or shaped by disasters, serve as propositions, offering insight into humanity’s negotiation with the enduring and hazardous nature of radioactive toxicity. Drawing from Poststructuralism and New Materialism, Tai scrutinizes the intricate, techno-political aspects of nuclear technology, emphasizing the production, management, and disposal of radioactive waste. He uses deep geological repositories to demonstrate how such designs delegate environmental responsibilities to geological space and time. Central to his research is the concept of “entrusting” to characterize humanity’s reliance on ecology’s self-healing capacities.

Jessica Wang

Sustainability, Smart Urban Systems

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Wang’s research interests center around the realm of smart urban systems fostering sustainable, long-term city development. With a solid foundation in Urban Studies and the natural sciences, she comes equipped with a
perspective on designing and managing urban environments to minimize their ecological impact while simultaneously optimizing the urban system. Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master in Landscape Architecture (MLA II) from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

During her master’s studies, she delved deeply into the development and application of green infrastructure as a potent tool for steering sustainable urban growth. Her journey has also taken me through invaluable experiences, serving as a research and teaching assistant at the GSD. These roles have afforded her the privilege of collaborating with experts across diverse disciplines, spanning regions such as Africa, Europe, America and Asia. She eagerly anticipate connecting with fellow researchers who share a fervor for crafting urban environments that are environmentally conscious and contribute to the well-being of inhabitants.

Chia-Ching Wu

Impacts of plant diversity on landscape preference, recovery from short-term stress and mental fatigue

Advisor: Dr. Bill Sullivan

Chia-Ching Wu is a Ph.D. candidate researching natural landscapes and health in built environments. Specifically, she examines the impacts of ecologically healthy landscapes on human health and well-being. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the National Chung Hsing University and a Master of Science from the National Taiwan University in Taiwan. She worked as a research assistant at the National Taiwan University; during that time, she was involved in research projects exploring the health benefits of diverse green spaces in both urban and rural environments.

Yijun Zeng

Human Perception of Urban Landscape: A Crowdsourcing Approach to Integrating Public Values into Geodesign Process

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Yijun Zeng is a doctoral student in landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. Zeng has studied landscape architecture for over 8 years and she received her master of science degree from Southeast University and a bachelor of agriculture degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. Currently, she works with Prof. Brian Deal in the Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) lab. Her research interests focus on the interaction between humans and urban landscape, and how big data and advanced technologies help to gain the knowledge and integrate human perception into planning support systems.

Read more here.

Delnaaz Kharadi

Architecture, Art History, Indian-Ocean Trade History

Dissertation: Architecture of Fire-Temple: Evolution of the typology and Shaping of Parsi Identity

Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Bross

Delnaaz is a Ph.D. student in Illinois School of Architecture (History and Theory track). She graduated with an M.A. in Art History from Pennsylvania State University and M.Arch from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She brings a diverse set of experiences to her Ph.D. studies – four years as a project architect in India (2015–2019) with Architect Hafeez Contractor, along with professional experience at RATIO in the U.S. (2023–2024). These experiences deeply inform her research, which explores the vast topic of Zoroastrian Architecture that remains significantly understudied not only within the broader architectural discourse but notably in the specific context of South Asia’s architectural history. Delnaaz situates fire-temple (ritualistic spaces of Parsi-Zoroastrians) as an architectural typology that evolved in South Asia in the late 18th century. Using architecture as a medium, she argues that the fire temple was a physical manifestation of the ‘identity’ making project of Parsis in South Asia, where they were growing socio-economically due to their role in the Indian Ocean trade.

Saba Imani

Human-Building Integration, Sustainability, Building Performance, Indoor Environmental Quality, Energy Efficiency, Occupant Health and Productivity, Environmental Resiliency, Post-Occupancy Evaluation, Advanced Sensing Technologies, Statistical Data Analysis

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

Saba Imani is a PhD student in the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (UIUC), holding both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Architectural Engineering.

Prior to joining UIUC, she was an Associate Researcher at the University of Southern California (USC), where she led research on advanced building technologies and design, focusing on optimizing building performance, particularly in energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality (thermal, air, acoustic, and lighting conditions), and enhancing occupant health and productivity. Saba’s research explores human-building integration and the use of advanced sensing technologies to create built environments that promote human physiological and environmental health, wellness, sustainability, and resilience. She also integrates her expertise in statistical data analysis to model and interpret complex datasets, strengthening predictive capabilities and supporting decision- making related to environmental performance and occupant well-being. Outside of her academic work, Saba enjoys swimming, hiking, skiing, reading, and traveling.