I'm Assistant Professor in the Design Department at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano, where I founded and co-directs the Materials Experience Lab (http://materialsexperiencelab.com/), an
international research group acting at the intersection of product design, materials science, social sciences and engineering with a transdisciplinary approach to materials for design.
I have been working in the field of materials for design for almost twenty years gaining expertise on this topic both in research and education. I have always been interested in the expressive-sensorial dimension of materials of design and their experiential aspects. At present, my research and teaching activities are focusing on: DIY-Materials for social innovation and sustainability, Speculative Materials, Tinkering with materials, Materials Driven Design (MDD) method, CMF (color, material and finishing)
design, materials for interactions and IoT (ICS Materials), emerging materials experiences, and material education.
The Material Driven Design method I developed with Elvin Karana is applied in design courses in major European universities, e.g. TUDelft (NL), Malmö University (SE), University of Gävle (SE), and Imperial College London. I teach the method at POLIMI, since 2013.
In the Design Department, I'm one of the coordinators of Madec, Materials Design Culture centre (www.madec.polimi.it/) and also I participate to Lens Lab, Learning Network on Sustainability (www.lenslab.polimi.it/), and I collaborate with Polifactory, the interdepartmental research laboratory
promoting a new culture of making (www.polifactory.polimi.it/). Furthermore, in1999 I started Materiali & Design, the materials library at the School of Design in the Politecnico di Milano.
My educational background is in Product Design (MSc, full marks) and Design more broadly (PhD).