Prof. dr. Giaccardi, E.

Elisa Giaccardi is Professor of Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. She also holds an appointment as Professor of Post-industrial Design at Umeå Institute of Design.

Academic Background

Elisa Giaccardi is Professor and Chair of Post-industrial Design at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), where she leads the research group Connected Everyday Lab. From 2018, she also holds a visiting position as Professor of Post-Industrial Design at the Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden. After groundbreaking work in metadesign, collaborative and open design processes, Giaccardi has during the last years focused on the challenges that a permeating digitalisation means for the field of design. Her recent research engages with “things" in new ways, with the starting point that "things" now hold both perception and possible agency (e.g. AI), and thus “participate" in design and use in ways that previous industrially produced objects could not.

As part of her activities in service to students and the broader TU Delft community, Elisa coordinates at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering the MSc Design for Interaction, co-directs the Delft Design Lab for graduate students Cities of Things, and is founding member and faculty liaison of the mission-driven program AiTech, a campus-wide initiative for the impact of AI on society. She also serves as co-Principle Investigator of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) Institute, a research collaboration between the City of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology and MIT, and is Chair of the Doctoral Education Committee of Delft University of Technology. Until 2018, she was one of the core members of Delft Women in Science (DEWIS), a campus-wide network committed to gender diversity, gender quality and gender awareness. Elisa was the recipient of a Delft Technology Fellowship for top female scientists (2012-17).

A TEDx and frequent keynote speaker, Elisa successfully brings together in her design research an interdisciplinary background in humanities, digital media and interaction design. She has strong teaching and collaborative research experience in a variety of disciplinary settings, academic cultures and international contexts, which has shaped her personal sensitivity, coaching and leadership style, and her appreciation of inclusion and diversity at all levels. She regularly lectures and publishes in international journals and at leading conferences for design research, interaction design and human-computer interaction, and has been the recipient of several scholarships and research grants in both Europe and the United States. She has served as an expert reviewer for NWO, the US National Science Foundation, and the National Research Council Canada, among others. She has served as an editor for ACM Interactions from 2010 to 2016, and is a member of the steering committee of Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), ACM flagship conference for interaction design research.

Experience

• 2018 – present
  Visiting professor, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden
• 2012 – present
  Full professor, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft
• 2009 – 2012
  Associate professor, Department of Computer Science & Institute for Culture and Technology, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• 2004 – 2009
  Research scientist, Center for LifeLong Learning & Design (L3D), University of Colorado at Boulder, USA