DANCING over IDEAS of Research

Amaresh Chakrabarti

Senior Professor and Chairman
Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing
Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Bangalore, India

Amaresh Chakrabarti is a Senior Professor and current Chairman for Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He has BE (Mech Engg, IIEST Shibpur), ME (Mech Design, IISc) and PhD (Engg Design, Univ of Cambridge UK). He led for 10 years the Design Synthesis group at EPSRC CoE Engg Design Centre at Univ of Cambridge. His interests are in synthesis, creativity, sustainability, and informatics. He published 13 books, over 290 peer-reviewed articles, and has 10 patents granted/pending. He co-authored DRM, a methodology used widely as a framework for design research. He has been Associate Editor, AI EDAM & Design Science Journal (Cambridge University Press), Area Editor, Research in Engg Design, Regional Editor, J Re-manufacturing (Springer), and Advisory Editor for 7 Journals incl. Clean Tech & Env. Policy (Springer), and J of Engg D and Int J Design Creativity & Innovation (T&F). He was on Advisory Board and Board of Management, Design Society; member, CII Design Council India; Jury, India Design Mark; invitee, CII Smart Manufacturing Council India. He founded IDeASLab – India’s first Design Observatory. He is Programme chair for Intl Conf Series on Research into Design (ICoRD), 22nd CIRP Design Conf 2012, 3rd Intl Conf on Design Creativity 2015 (3rd ICDC) and vice-Chair for AI in Design and Design Computing & Cognition Conference. He is an Honorary Fellow of Institution of Engineering Designers, the peer society under the UK Royal Charter in engineering design, and TUM Ambassador Awardee from TU Munich Germany. 15 of his papers won top paper awards in international conferences. He co-initiated India’s first Smart Factory Lab. He also heads IISc-TCS Innovation Lab, IISc Press, and Springer International Book Series on Design Science & Innovation. He received Careers360 Faculty Research Award 2018 for being the ‘Most Outstanding Researcher’ in Decision Sciences. He is the current Editor-in-Chief for AI EDAM Journal (CUP).

Chia Yew Boon

Director (Knowledge, Learning and Research)
Office of Information, Knowledge and Library Services
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Chia Yew Boon received his MSc (Information Studies) and MSc (Knowledge Management) from Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Currently, as Director (Knowledge, Learning and Research) at the Office of Information, Knowledge and Library Services, he provides strategic leadership for advancing and implementing digital scholarship initiatives with focus on digital humanities, scholarly publishing, research impact metrics and data visualisation. He works collaboratively with different communities in NTU to enhance the support for teaching, research, publishing and knowledge sharing. Prior to this appointment, he headed the Humanities & Social Sciences Library and New Media Group, advising researchers on the effective use of digital tools and social media platforms to enrich their research and provide access to their scholarship and building online portals and digital exhibits. Last year, he had received a National Day Commendation Medal as a recognition for his work. Before NTU, he delivered customised business knowledge and led several knowledge management projects with Singapore Economic Development Board, garnering three Innovation Awards.

Alexander Damianisch

Head, Support Art and Research
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Alexander Damianisch is the director of the institute Zentrum Fokus Forschung (Center Research Focus) and head of the department Support Art and Research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He works for the development and strengthening of research in art and science. He is a senior expert and advisor in the field of research funding and provides extensive knowledge based on long time experience in governmental and institutional developments and consulting. He was inaugural manager of one of the first funding programmes for artistic research in Europe (PEEK).  Regularly he works as trainer, curator and moderator and contributes to the fields of inter-, trans- and cross-disciplinary studies. His recent international publications are “Poetics of Understanding. Language Arts and Artistic Research”, “Promotion of Artistic Research” and “Heterotopoetics”. He studied in Vienna and Paris. His doctoral thesis was on “Poetics of Silence: The Retreat of the Modern as a Pattern of Tradition”, additionally he holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Arts Management.  Via the Zentrum Fokus Forschung (zentrumfokusforschung.uni-ak.ac.at) he is in charge of the first PhD in Arts Programme in Austria. Since 2014 he has been a member of the executive board of the Angewandte Innovation Laboratory (www.ailab.org). Since 2013 (re-elected 2015 and 2018) he has been part of the executive board of the international Society for Artistic Research (www.societyforartisticresearch.org). Since 2011 he has been a delegate for the Austrian Science Fund (www.fwf.ac.at). Between 2002 and 2005 he did work in Germany (Centrum Judaicum Berlin and at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, head of the Art, Science and Business) . In 1999 and 2000 he lectured at the University of Durham, UK. In 1998 he was a visiting lecturer at the Lomonossov-University, Moscow, Russia.

NIK Gowing

Nanyang Visiting Professor
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Nik Gowing was a main news presenter for the BBC’s international 24-hour news channel BBC World News 1996-2014. He presented The Hub with Nik Gowing, BBC World Debates, Dateline London, plus location coverage of major global stories. Nik has extensive reporting experience over three decades in diplomacy, defence and international security. He also has a much sought-after analytical expertise on the failures to manage information in the new transparent environments of conflicts, crises, emergencies and times of tension. His peer-reviewed study at Oxford University is “Skyful of Lies and Black Swans”. It predicts and identifies the new vulnerability, fragility and brittleness of institutional power in the new all-pervasive public information space. It can be downloaded free online after registration. The work follows an earlier study undertaken at the Kennedy School, Harvard.

In 2016, Nik Gowing co-authored interim findings of the “Thinking the Unthinkable” study. It is based on sixty top level confidential interviews of corporate and public service leaders, plus hundreds more conversations including with the new generation of millennials. The study is in partnership with CIMA. It reveals candidly the factors that explain why so many leaders face new difficulties identifying what looms in the disruptions of the “new normal” that have emerged since 2013. The findings are scary.

In 2014 Nik was appointed a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London in the School of Social Science and Public Policy. In 2016 he is a Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. From 2014 he was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-Economics.

He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by Exeter University in 2012 and Bristol University in 2015 for both his ongoing cutting-edge analyses and distinguished career in international journalism.

Joanna Grabski

Director and Professor
School of Art
Arizona State University
Arizona, United States

Joanna Grabski (Ph.D.) is Director of the School of Art and Professor of Art History at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University. Grabski’s research and publications examine visual arts and art institutions, artistic livelihoods, creative economies, urbanization, and art world globalization. Her book, Art World City: The Creative Economy of Artists and Urban Life in Dakar (2017) examines the city’s art scene in relation to urbanization and art world globalization over a sixteen-year period. She also wrote, directed, and produced, the documentary film, Market Imaginary (2013) about Dakar’s famously storied Colobane Market as a site for the creative transformation of used objects. Her research on urban visuality frames the special issue of Africa Today dedicated to Visual Experience in Urban Africa (2007) which she edited. She is co-editor of the book, African Art, Interviews, Narratives: Bodies of Knowledge at Work (2013). Among her awards and fellowships are the Art Journal Award and the Millard Meiss Publication Award from the College Art Association, the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship, and several New Directions Initiative Grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is working on two new research projects about artists and art worlds: The Global Art School Futures Project, a multi-sited initiative focused on the critical role of art schools in forming globally oriented artists for the 21st century; and the Arizona Artists’ Oral History Project, a digital archive of interviews created in collaboration with Arizona’s artists.

Michael Khor

Director 
Talent Recruitment And Career Support (TRACS) Office and Bibliometrics Analysis
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Michael Khor is currently Director of Talent Recruitment And Career Support (TRACS) Office and Bibliometrics Analysis. Prior to his appointment, he held a number of directorate appointments such as Director of Research; Director, Research Support Office; Director (Projects) at the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister’s Office; Associate Provost (Research), President’s Office, NTU and Director of Research Support Office. Michael obtained his PhD degree from Monash University, Australia. He was an Experimental Scientist at CSIRO in Melbourne before joining NTU in 1989. He is also a Professor at the NTU School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering  and has published over 300 research articles on thermal sprayed coatings, powder technology, bioceramics and nanomaterials. Michael has studied extensively the impact of NTU’s research outcomes and identifies emerging fields that NTU wishes to develop capabilities in. He has been invited to speak at various international forum and conferences on university research metrics and measurement of performance in recent years.

Joseph LIOW Chin Yong

Dean
College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Joseph Chinyong Liow is Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and concurrently, Dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also Professor of Comparative and International Politics. He held the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, where he was also a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program. Joseph’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region.

 

Galina Mihaleva

Assistant Professor
School of Art Design and Media
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Andrea Nanetti

Associate Chair (Research) and Associate Professor
School of Art Design and Media
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Andrea Nanetti is Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Research at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media. He is a historian by training (Medieval and Renaissance studies). He received his Laurea Degree and his Ph.D. from the University of Bologna (Prof. Antonio Carile). He has also studied at the Universität zu Köln (Prof. Peter Schreiner), Paris I-Sorbonne (Prof. Heleni Glikatzi Ahrweiler), Paris X-Nanterre (Prof. Evelyne Patlagean), the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens, Profs. Chryssa Maltezou, Nikolaos Oikonomides, and Evanghelos Chrysos), the Universität Wien (Prof. Johannes Koder), and at Brown University in the US (Prof. Anthony Molho). His main research interest is in innovation and change in heritage interpretation processes. As a scholar he applies interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary methods to the study of regional man-heritage-landscape systems, national art-heritage-politics relationships, and global histories of intercontinental heritage networks.

Helga Nowotny

Professor Emeritus
Social Studies of Science
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich
(Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich)
Zurich, Switzerland

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and a founding member of the European Research Council. In 2007 she was elected ERC Vice President and from March 2010 until December 2013 President of the ERC. Currently she is Chair of the ERA Council Forum Austria and member of the Austrian Council. Among other, she is also Vice-President of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and member of the Board of Trustees of Falling Walls, Berlin. She is Nanyang Technological University Singapore Visiting Professor. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, NY. and a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Vienna. She has held teaching and research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Vienna; King’s College, Cambridge; University of Bielefeld; Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; Ecole des Hautes Etudes an Sciences Sociales, Paris; Science Center for Social Sciences, Berlin; Collegium Budapest; Budapest. Helga Nowotny is Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Academies in Belgium, Germany Austria and Italy and has received honorary doctorates from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, the University of Bergen and the University of Edinburgh just to mention a few. She continues to serve on many international advisory boards in Austria and throughout Europe. Helga Nowotny has published widely in Science and Technology Studies, STS, and on social time. Her latest books include “The Cunning of Uncertainty” (2015 Polity Press) and “Eigenzeit. Revisited” in “Die Zeit der Algorithmen” (Matthes & Seitz). Throughout her professional career Helga Nowotny has been engaged in science and innovation policy matters and continues to serve as advisor at national and EU level.

Barbara Putz-Plecko

Vice-Rector (Research in Art and Science) 
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Barbara Putz-Plecko is vice-rector for Research in Art and Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and directs the departments Art and Communication Practices, and Textiles (Free, Applied and Experimental Artistic Design). The artists heads the Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education. One of her key activities focuses on participatory and transcultural artistic and art-mediating practices. She was a member of the Expert Commission on Education of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture 2007/8 and wrote the background report on cultural education for the Council of Europe, Paris 2008/09. She represents the University of Applied Arts in the doctoral colloquium and in several international research partnerships.

Peer M. Sathikh

Associate Chair (Academic) and Associate Professor
School of Art Design and Media
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Peer Sathikh is presently Associate Professor at the School of Art Design and Media (ADM) and is the Associate Chair (Academic) of the school. Peer is the Director of the Centre for Asian Art and Design at ADM. Peer is also a REP Fellow, a selected group of academics who teach students of NTU’s Renaissance Engineering Programme. Peer is a Visiting Professor at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IITBombay) and an Adjunct Professor at the VIT University, Vellore, India. Peer teaches core modules in product design and special electives such as User Experience in Design and Islamic Art and Design at ADM, and core modules on Renaissance Design at REP. He conducts an annual masters level specialist workshop on Transportation and Mobility at IIT Bombay. Past President of the Designers Association Singapore (DAS), Peer is also a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Product Design and Management Association (PDMA), USA and the Design Research Society (DRS), UK. He has been invited/guest speaker at design and product development conferences in many countries, including Singapore, Japan, China and India, where he has given key note addresses and presented papers on the subject of design, design culture and design education.

Vibeke Sorensen

Chair and Professor
School of Art Design and Media
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Vibeke Sorensen is Professor and Chair of the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU. Her creative work and research in experimental digital multimedia, computer animation, interactive architectural installation, and networked visual-music performance spans four decades and has been published and exhibited worldwide. From 1984-1994, she was Founding Director of the Computer Animation Laboratory in the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts, and from 1994-2005 she was Professor and Founding Chair of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts in the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (USC). Sorensen is a 2001 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Film/Video/Multimedia. In 2007 she was Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Art Gallery: Global Eyes. Her research has been supported by Intel Corporation, New York State Council on the Arts, US National Science Foundation, the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and Zumberge Fund for Innovation in Research, and NTU.

Hallam Stevens

Associate Director (Academic)
Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Hallam Stevens is an Associate Professor at History Programme and in the School of Biological Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Associate Director of the NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity. His research focuses on the history and social impacts of recent technologies including genomics, biotechnology, computers, big data, and algorithms.