Our Team
FACULTY LEAD
Wendy W Fok – Visiting Professor, Pratt Institute
Prof Wendy W Fok, trained as an architect and designer, is a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, and previously, was an Assistant Professor of Integrated Design at the Parsons School of Design Strategies, and the SDS liaison / committee member for the Making Center of the New School.
Recently, she has been involved with the Harvard Innovation Lab since 2014, been mentored by Prof Joe Lassiter (Chair of the Harvard Innovation Lab, Harvard Business School), Diego Rodriguez (Senior Partner of IDEO), and was the 2nd runner up for the Harvard Design Challenge 2014, with her start-up concept for a public benefits corporation.
Fok holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, Concentration in Economics (Statistics), from Barnard College of Columbia University; Master of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Certification of Urban Policy and Planning at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University; and, is completing her Doctor of Design (expected 2016) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in collaboration with the Harvard Law School. Her doctoral research is an investigative approach between intellectual property issues of ownership / authorship of digital / real property in computational innovation, and ethical / equitable application of technical methods within open innovation, digital fabrication, and commodisation for the built environment.
In 2017/18, Fok is a co-editor of an AD Journal, published by Wiley, titled “Digital Property: Open Source Architecture“. In 2021, Fok has published a book chapter, “Bio-Data-Matter in New York City” by Routledge in “Data, Matter, Design – Strategies in Computational Design”, edited by Frank Melendez, Nancy Diniz, Marcella Del Signore.
LEAD RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Logan Larkin is a Fine Arts major at Parsons School of Design and featured artist at art one gallery. As an artist, designer, researcher and business minded individual Larkin takes an openminded approach to the integration of creative studies and innovation. His research at Future Factory is focused on new material research, design objects and large/small scale production projects around the world.
PAST RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
LEAD RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Concerned with policy, permaculture, ecological infrastructure, and transformational theory, Calli Sara is writing and designing a book/toolkit for New York City practitioners with professor and scholar Rositsa Ilievia as her independent study and thesis.Inspired by the existing green infrastructure projects in NYC and other innovations still developing, Calli believes that it is an attainable reality and mandatory responsibility to create livable and self sustaining environments. She is eager and enthusiastic about public and municipal participation in redefining productive landscapes to prove utopias are not a pipe dream.
Calli Sara has worked with Mia Lehrer + Associates, an urban design and landscape architect firm in Los Angeles, on a project to revitalize the Los Angeles River. She has assisted in the development of Grown in LA, a multifaceted NPO establishing nurseries, seed banks, and educational/vocational programs throughout Los Angeles County. She has worked with Brooklyn Grange on the Vice Media HQ’s green roof and GrowNYC to design and construct growing structures for their community garden projects.
LEAD RESEARCH ASSISTANT
John Acosta – MS. Strategic Design & Management
John is a Community Organizer, Researcher, and Design Strategist. He is currently researching the transitions within the coal mining region in Wyoming, focusing on the impact the transition will have on local economics. As well as potential job loss, he intends to discover new energy and carbon industries in Wyoming which its population will embrace.
John maintains interests in the urban environment, land management, and opportunities that open space and collaborative projects provide the surrounding communities in the most populated environments. Innovation is unpredictable, yet collaboration and open access to information allows John to be adaptable in his work.
LEAD RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Sebastian Caballero – MS. Strategic Design & Management
Sebastian Caballero is an innovation strategist with experience guiding companies from diverse industries to develop transformative solutions for the market through user centered innovation, specializing in strategic innovation, brand management, trend analysis, and social conscious business models.
For four years, Caballero worked as an innovation and strategy consultant for multinationals covering emerging territories in Latin America, where he opened markets with new products, services, business models and strategies. Afterwards, he moved to Mexico City, where he obtained an MS in Innovation in 2016.
Currently he lives in New York City where he is pursuing an MS in Strategic Design & Management at Parsons, researching how new technologies and consumer behaviors are forcing unprecedented shifts in leading companies of globalized markets, which demand pivots in terms of transparency in supply chain, social-environmental responsibility, technology, open innovation and sharing economy approaches. He feels passionate about participating in multinational and transdisciplinary teams on entrepreneurship, sustainability, and publicly engaged projects, including Levi’s Sustainability Hall, The Geneva Challenge 2016 on Advancing Development Goals, Fair Share Urban SOS, DMI Graduate Contest on Design Intelligence Education, and The IDEO Open Challenge.
ADVISORY RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Eduarda Aun – MS. in Design and Urban Ecologies
Eduarda is an architect and urban planner from Brazil, recognized for the revitalization project of a degraded area of the city’s center. Se is also the co-founder of Coletivo MOB, a civic engagement organization for urban and social transformation in her home country.
ADVISORY RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Guillermo Gomez – MA. Theories of Urban Practice
Guillermo León Gómez is a research based artist and curator whose work has focused on globalization, trade, and economic infrastructure. He co-founded TVGOV, a political initiative re-invisioning territory and its ecological sustainability. He has also co-organized multiple research projects, that include Port to Port, a curatorial endeavor on global port cities. As a graduate student at Parsons’ Theories of Urban Practice program, his current interests lie in how speculative real estate and the global financial sector reinforce power structures in the city.
