Announcing Carnegie Mellon Architecture Faculty & Staff New Hires and Updates

The School of Architecture is pleased to announce the following faculty and staff new hires and updates for the upcoming 2023-24 academic year.

Please join us in welcoming the newest additions to our school community. We look forward to their collaboration in the coming year.

Faculty Hires

Tenure Track

**Juney Lee**
T. David Fitz-Gibbon Assistant Professor of Architecture

Juney Lee joins as T. David Fitz-Gibbon Assistant Professor of Architecture.

He is deeply inspired by the creative roles that architecture and structural design can play in alleviating the impending environmental and social crises throughout the world. He is particularly interested in how more intelligently shaped and constructed structures can dramatically reduce the embodied energy of buildings, minimize construction waste and empower new materials. His transdisciplinary research aspirations across computational structural design, regenerative materials and sustainable construction methods, are united by an effort to accelerate the decarbonization of the building industry through advancements of emerging construction technologies that are scalable, affordable and accessible to a wide range of environmental and socioeconomic contexts.

At CMU, Juney leads the teaching of the core structural design curriculum, as well as integrated design studios and advanced computational structural design electives. In addition to teaching, he also advises student research and thesis work across all academic levels within Carnegie Mellon Architecture and beyond. He is passionate about developing hands-on, engaging, and immersive methods of teaching and learning structural design that is focused on enhancing design intuition and sensibility of students, which are increasingly more important and necessary human skills in light of rapidly evolving generative AI-based design tools.

Search Committee: Joshua Lee (Chair), Jeremy Ficca, Susan Finger, Kristen Kurland, Azadeh Sawyer

**Vernelle A. A. Noel**
Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urban Design

Vernelle A. A. Noel joins the school as the Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture and Urban Design.

Vernelle is a computational design scholar, architect, artist and Director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab. She investigates traditional and digital practices and their intersections with society. Using interdisciplinary approaches, she builds new frameworks, methodologies and tools to explore social, cultural and political aspects of computation and emerging technologies for new reconfigurations of practice, pedagogy and publics. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and ideas2innovation (i2i), among others. She is a recipient of the DigitalFUTURES Young Award for exceptional research and scholarship in the field of critical computational design. She gave a TEDx Talk titled “The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival.” Vernelle holds a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University, a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT, a Bachelor of Architecture from Howard University and a Diploma in Civil Engineering from Trinidad & Tobago. She has practiced as an architect in the U.S., India, and Trinidad & Tobago.

Search Committee: Daniel Cardoso Llach (Chair), Daragh Byrne, Laura Garófalo, Golan Levin, Francesca Torello

Ann Kalla Visiting Professorship

**Misri Patel**
2023-25 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor

Misri Patel joins the school as 2023-25 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor.

She is an architect and researcher from Mumbai, India. Her pedagogical interests focus on material systems, computational design, additive manufacturing and traditional-advanced fabrication methods. In 2019, she received the Ballard Fellowship at Lawrence Technological University and served as a Research Lead at Taubman College on Long Range Glass, which won the R+D Award by Architect Magazine in 2022. Her work has been published in Unfolded, Portico, ideasforward-24H, ACSA, Acadia Conference Proceedings and exhibited at the Venice Biennale, DigitalFUTURES conference and the Center for Architecture, New York. Prior to CMU, she served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

She received a Bachelor of Architecture from NMIMS BSSA in Mumbai and a Master of Science in Digital and Material Technologies from Taubman College, University of Michigan. Prior to her teaching appointments, she gained professional experience at the offices of Sameep Padora, Mumbai, and LOT-EK, New York, and shadowed at Perkins and Will, Los Angeles.

Search Committee: Omar Khan (Chair), Mary-Lou Arscott, Priyanka Bista, Gerard Damiani, Jonathan Kline

**Tuliza Sindi**
2023-25 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor

Tuliza Sindi joins the school as 2023-25 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor.

She is an architecture educator, researcher and practitioner based between the U.S. and South Africa. She founded the masters design-research studio Unit 19 (2020-22) at the University of Johannesburg's Graduate School of Architecture (GSA).

Tuliza retires design approaches to ‘land’, to work with the ‘ground’ as a calendar and architecture as its metronome within the framework of chronopolitics and property regimes. In 2022, she co-founded cross-disciplinary architecture collective room19isaFactory. with three Unit 19 graduates. Through what they call the practice of ‘Quiet Architecture’ (with ‘Quiet’ as defined by Prof. Tina Campt in her 2017 book, Listening to Images, referring to the practice of performing the future now), the collective speculates about liberating the ground from chronopolitical captivity through myth- and culture-making, toward deriving alternate spatial futures.

Search Committee: Omar Khan (Chair), Mary-Lou Arscott, Priyanka Bista, Gerard Damiani, Jonathan Kline

Teaching Track

**Jongwan Kwon**
Assistant Teaching Professor

Jongwan Kwon joins the school as an Assistant Teaching Professor.

Jongwan is an architectural designer and educator. His research, teaching and professional practice examine the intersections of material culture and infrastructure with a focus on regional sustainability. Before joining CMU, he held academic appointments at Kansas State University as an assistant professor (2021-23) and at RISD (2017-21), where he served as the graduate studio coordinator and was nominated for the Frazier Teaching Award. He was the recipient of the SOM Prize and MIT Architecture Teaching Fellowship (2016-17), and his work and writing have been published in journals such as Pidgin, Lunch, Room One Thousand, On Site and others.

Jongwan received his Master of Architecture and a Certificate in Urban Design from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from Hanyang University with a Summa Cum Laude and Thesis Prize. He gained professional experience in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo.

Review Committee: Omar Khan, Mary-Lou Arscott, Joshua Bard, Kai Gutschow, Erica Cochran Hameen

Adjunct faculty

Mark Chambers (B.Arch ‘01, Heinz ‘02) joins the school as adjunct faculty.

Mark is an experienced environmental policy leader with 20 years of experience in sustainability, energy and urban systems. He is a passionate advocate for social justice and community activism in driving lasting change for the health of our people and planet. Mark is a licensed architect inspired by public service and lessons of collective action – big and small – in favor of a fair, green economy. He believes deeply in the power and potential of an interconnected and inclusive movement that seeks 21st century solutions for our communities, our built environment and our human species.

Anne Chen joins the school as adjunct faculty.

She is the founder of BLD:ac, a capital projects consultancy, helping organizations and businesses develop and implement the vision around their real estate assets and needs to maximize impact. After over 25 years designing award winning buildings and spaces as a Principal with EDGE studio and GBBN Architects, Anne now assists owners in defining the strategy to optimize physical space to elevate their success.

Tonya Markiewicz joins the school as adjunct faculty.

Tonya has worked in architecture for over 12 years in NYC and Pittsburgh, specializing in multi-family housing, historic restoration, interior design and as a sustainability coordinator for LEED projects. She is a graduate architect and project manager at Perfido Weiskopf Wagstaff + Goettel (PWWG), where she is currently working on affordable housing projects in East Liberty and the Hill District and designing historic building renovations in Mt. Washington.

Nazia Tarannum joins the school as adjunct faculty.

A design professional and educator, Nazia engages critical design thinking and community engagement through architectural practice. She draws her inspiration from critical urban, social and climate justice issues of our time. Most recently, she has been working with Form.3 Architects as a Co-Curator on the Historic Preservation and Landscape Design of Old Dhaka Central Jail and Redevelopment of Surrounding Area project. Nazia holds an MArch from the College of Creative Arts at Miami University in Ohio and a BArch from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka.

Faculty Updates

**Sarosh Anklesaria**
Assistant Teaching Professor

Sarosh Anklesaria has been promoted to Assistant Teaching Professor.

Sarosh is an architect and educator. He joined the school as the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Professor of Architecture in 2020 and serves as the Track Chair of the Master of Architecture (M.Arch) program.

**Vicki Achnani**
Associate Studio Professor

Vicki Achnani returns to the school in a new role as Associate Studio Professor.

He joined the school in 2022 as studio teaching faculty in the Praxis 1 Studio.

Theodossis (Theo) Issaias will return as Special Faculty.

Theo is an architect and educator, and recently joined the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art as Associate Curator. He joined the school in 2022 as studio teaching faculty in the ASO Studios.

Staff Hires

Mark Jovanovich, Multimedia Support Specialist for the College of Fine Arts, joins the school part-time as Computing Support. In this role, he is responsible for the school's research computing infrastructure, backend support on the website and teaching technology.

Leanne Rosso joins the school part time as Outreach Associate. In this role, she manages the outreach programs for the School of Architecture through the Center for Architecture Explorations.