Current Ph.D. Students

Amir Amirzadeh

Amir Amirzadeh is a doctoral student in Architecture.

Manal Anis

Climate-adaptive building envelope, responsive architecture

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

Manal Anis is a PhD student in Architecture in the Technology and Environment track. She received her Master of Science in Architecture degree from The Pennsylvania State University and her Bachelor of Architecture degree from BUET, Bangladesh. She previously worked as a Designer at WRNS Studio, CA, where she worked on multiple core and shell projects. Her current research focuses on climate-adaptive building envelop systems that can be designed to respond to external environmental stimuli as organic, breathable skins.

You can read about her previous research 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

Shreyonti Chakraborty is a doctoral student in Architecture.

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

Urbanization, South Asia, Global South, Postcolonial Studies

Advisor: Dr. D. Fairchild Ruggles

Soumya Dasgupta is a Doctoral Candidate in Architecture in the History and Theory track. He is also pursuing a graduate minor in Global Studies. He has a Masters degree in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and a Bachelor of Architecture from IIEST, Shibpur, Kolkata. He is a recipient of the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship and has worked as a teaching assistant for graduate-level history and theory courses in Architecture. Read more about Soumya.

Ellen Hartman

Ellen Hartman is a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture.

Ali Momen Heravi

Ali Momen Heravi is a doctoral student in Architecture.

Keun Jang

Building Energy Simulation

Advisor: Dr. Yun Kyu Yi

Keun is a Ph.D. student in the School of Architecture. He received his bachelor degree from School of Agricultural Engineering at Kangwon National University, with a focus on the automatic sprinkler of mushroom cultivation development. He finished his Master of Architecture at PennDesign, focusing on the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics. Read more about Keun.

Xiangrong Jiang

Xiangrong Jiang is a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture.

Jonathan Kim

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning

Advisor: Dr. Richard K. Strand

Jonathan Kim received his Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering and Master’s degree in Sustainable Architectural Engineering at Hanyang University, Seoul. After graduating he worked as a building energy researcher and engineer for four years at WooWon M&E. In his current research, Jonathan is making a model to use real-life chiller operation data to propose an optimized chiller operation plan in real-time.

Michael King

Michael King is a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture.

Yoonshin Kwak

Environmental Planning, Urban System Science, Resilient Design

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Yoonshin Kwak is a PhD candidate in Landscape Architecture. His doctoral research investigates the integration of urban system science with physical designs and centers on coupled land-use and hydrological modeling. He is involved in several research projects, including solar energy assessment, socioeconomic model development, and green infrastructure planning analysis at the LEAM laboratory under the supervision of Professor Brian Deal.

He holds a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington. Before joining the doctoral program at Illinois, he was a Ph.D. student in Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Siqi Lai

Urban vitality, urban open spaces

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Siqi Lai is a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on the human activities in urban spaces, exploring the relationship between people’s behavior and the built environment in cities. She investigates the factors related to open space vitality through multi-source data. She completed a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Tongji University in Shanghai, China.

Kyung-Kuhn Lee

Korean landscape tradition, Contemporary landscape architectural theory

Advisor: Dr. David L. Hays

Kyung-Kuhn Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research examines landscape as a discursive field of cultural identity, socio-ecological value, and disciplinary interests, particularly in the Korean context. His dissertation presents a new history of the Korean Confucian Academies by foregrounding their marginalized landscapes, which have been functioning as a kind of floating signifier, supporting contradictory ideas of nature, landscape, and heritage in the process of rapid westernization. Kuhn is a Fulbright Scholar from 2016 and received an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Yaxin Li

Geometric design and structural analysis of deployable structures

Advisor: Dr. Sudarshan Krishnan

Yaxin Li is an architecture doctoral student in building structures under the advisorship of Dr. Sudarshan Krishnan at the School of Architecture. She received her M. Arch degree from UIUC in 2017 and a B. Arch from Xiamen University in China. She previously worked as a research assistant with Dr. Krishnan on the structural analysis of tensegrity cable domes. Her professional experience includes work as an architectural assistant at Keanetech.

Yaxin’s doctoral research is related to transformable structures. Her current research focuses on stability analysis of deployable domes. She has co-authored two conference papers and has a journal paper. She is a reviewer of the Journal of Architectural Education, and a member of ASEE, IASS, AISC, ASCE and CCIA. Read more about Yaxin.

Yuan Liao

Scissor-based deployable structures, including geometric design, kinematics, dynamics and structural analyses

Advisor: Dr. Sudarshan Krishnan

Yuan Liao is a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the School of Architecture. He is a student member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He holds a 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, building roofs 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

Lassamon Maitrameet is a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture.

Ilona Matkovszki

Ilona Matkovszki is a doctoral student in Landscape Architecture.

Keith Miller

Social and behavioral factors in urban design

Advisor: Dr. Lynne Dearborn

Keith Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate researching interpersonal behavior in planned communities where air quality is degraded, focusing on how actions related to “sense of community” may be affected. While in the Ph.D. program, he has taught numerous seminars and lectures, and has presented work at conferences every year. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, he worked professionally at four different design firms over the course of 14 years, working on worldwide projects ranging from single-family homes to campus masterplans. He plans to graduate in 2021.

Bhaswati Mukherjee

Daylighting and human health

Advisor: Dr. Mohamed Boubekri

Bhaswati Mukherjee is a doctoral student in the School of Architecture. Her research investigates how the built environment can be designed to improve the health and wellbeing of its occupants. She has a Master of Architecture from the University of Kansas with a Health and Wellness certificate, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, India. Read more about Bhaswati.

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.

Widya Aulia Ramadhani

Aging processes and adaptation in residential environments

Advisor: Dr. Lynne Dearborn

Widya A. Ramadhani is a Ph.D. candidate with research focusing on person-environment transactions to negotiate age-related physical and cognitive changes, particularly in residential environments. Her dissertation research is on built environment support for older adults aging in place with long-term mobility disabilities. She is also a graduate research assistant in the Human Factors and Aging Laboratory. Read more about Widya.

Aparajita Santra

Gender, Urbanism, Global South

Advisor: Dr. John Stallmeyer

Aparajita Santra is a Ph.D. student in Architecture in the History and Theory track. Her research interests are in gendered urbanism of the global south while focusing on aspects of empowerment and right to the city for women from informal settlements. She has an M.Arch in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and her undergraduate degree in Architecture is from Piloo Mody College of Architecture, Cuttack. Her professional experience includes working as an architect with Building Design Partnership, New Delhi, and Raj Rewal Associates, New Delhi. She has also been involved as a researcher and consultant with a social organization under UNESCO and worked on gender, culture and sustainability issues for rural communities.

Nubras Samayeen

An Architecture of the Land: The National Assembly Building Complex in Bangladesh

Advisor: Dr. D. F. Ruggles

Nubras Samayeen is a doctoral candidate with a minor in Heritage. Her research on architect Louis Kahn probes the relationship between architecture and landscape and investigates the construction of national identity through built forms. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Bangladesh, and dual master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has practiced architecture with HOK and Eisenman Architects and taught at Howard and University of Asia Pacific in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her research has appeared in numerous publications and has she has won fellowships such as the Charles Moore Fellowship, Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship, and an Illinois Humanities Research Institute Fellowship.

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.

Chia-Ching Wu

Landscapes and human health

Advisor: Dr. William Sullivan

Chia-Ching Wu is a doctoral student specializing in Health and Wellbeing. Her research explores the extent to which biodiversity influences human health and wellbeing. She received her Bachelor of Science from National Chung Hsing University and her Master of Science from National Taiwan University in Taiwan. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant in projects about landscape and health at National Taiwan University.

Yijun Zeng

Green infrastructure, land-use impact assessments, ecosystem services

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 how green infrastructures benefit citizens and applying a data-driven approach to modeling the process.

Le Zhang

Environmental impact assessment, ecological design

Advisor: Dr. Brian Deal

Le Zhang is a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture. He received an MLA from Penn State and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Peking University. His research applies biological and ecological principles to landscape design. His dissertation includes the assessment of provision and the delivery of ecosystem services in cities, as well as designing parks that are resilient to pests using biological control.