Alev Sonmez is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. She conducts her research within the VICI project 'Design for mood Regulation'. 

Academic Background

Alev Sonmez was born in Bulgaria, and grew up in Turkey. She studied Industrial Design (Bachelor) at METU, in Turkey, including four months at Loughborough University, in the UK on the Erasmus Exchange programme.

In 2015, she moved to the Netherlands to study Design for Interaction (Master) at TU Delft. After obtaining her master's degree, she was involved in the Design for Mood Regulation Project as an assistant researcher for three months. Afterwards, she did a six-month service design internship at the Amsterdam Municipality, in the district of Nieuw-West. She implemented the design thinking approach to local governmental processes, to facilitate the transformation to the participatory democracy. 

In 2019, she started her PhD within the Design for Mood Regulation Project. She focuses on mood phenomenon from a collective perspective and specifically studies group vibe experience. Her research aims to support designers with the tools and methods to create products / services that can facilitate constructive and desirable group vibe experiences.

Her PhD project is supervised by Prof. dr. ir. Pieter Desmet and Dr. ir. Natalia Romero Herrera.

Education

• 2019 ─ Present
  PhD Design for Mood Regulation, Faculty of Industrial Design, TU Delft
• 2016 ─ 2018
  MSc Design for Interaction, Faculty of Industrial Design, TU Delft
• 2013 ─ 2014
  (Erasmus Exchange) BSc Industrial and Product Design, Loughborough University
• 2009 ─ 2014
  BSc Industrial Design, Faculty of Architecture, Middle East Technical University

Experience

• 2019
  Lecturer, Happy City Project, Honours Programme Delft
• 2018
  Service design intern, Amsterdam Municipality Stadsdeel Nieuw-West
• 2017 ─ 2018
  Part-time research assistant, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft
• 2015
  Part-time industrial designer, Evreka
• 2013
  Industrial design intern, Arcelik Group

Lectures and/or coaches students on:

• Design and Emotion (ID5564)
• Graduation projects