Aarhus Universitets segl

People

Peter Gall Krogh

Professor, Head of the Design Research Group
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.110, 8000 Aarhus C

Peter Gall Krogh is educated as architect and is Professor in Design at the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University where he heads the Socio-Technical Design group. He has participated and led a wide range of educational programs and research projects in both academia and industry with the focus of integrating services, IT and physical artifacts and spaces. His work is marked by a continuous effort to bridge academic, artistic, commercial and social interests; pointing to solutions that enable people to pursue desirable and profitable cultural changes both large and small-scale – also denoted social innovation. His particular interest are tools and techniques for citizen engagement in development processes and how design may be used for knowledge production – Constructive Design Research.


Majken Kirkegaard Rasmussen

Assistant Professor
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.118, Aarhus C

Majken Kirkegård Rasmussen (f) in an Assistant Professor in the Socio-technical Design group at the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University. She is educated as architect, with product design as her specialty. She holds a PhD from Computer Science at Aarhus University, on shape-changing interfaces. Her research centers on exploring dynamic qualities in physical products, as well as has a focus on robotics,  interaction design and new materials. She has been involved in a range of interdisciplinary research projects, collaborating with people ranging from: physics, chemistry, anthropology, philosophy, engineering and computer science.


Minna Pakanen

Assistant Professor
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.110, 8000 Aarhus C

Minna Pakanen is an Assistant Professor in the Socio-technical Design group at the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University. Her background is in design with Master’s degree in Industrial design, with a focus on product and interaction design. She holds a PhD from Information Processing Science at University of Oulu, Finland, on anticipated user experience evaluation with visual materials. Her research focuses on interaction design and anticipated user experience evaluation. Prior to this position she worked as Postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Ubiquitous Computing in the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research projects focused on augmented and virtual reality, internet of things, as well as design of wearable technology.


Sofie Kinch

Post Doctoral Associate
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.110, 8000 Aarhus C

Sofie Kinch is an educated architect and holds a post-doc position in the Socio-technical Design group at the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University. The foundation for her research is an industrial Ph.D. from Aarhus School of Architecture and The Alexandra Institute Ltd (2014) focusing on how to design for cultural change through space; physical interiors and IT. Sofie has a particular interest in tactile aesthetics, such as textiles and shape-changing furniture, and explores how the intimate scale of interiors affects our perception of the space extensively. Along with her academic interests, Sofie is also embracing the artistic and commercial fields, for example, collaborating with international fashion houses, making museum exhibitions and curating prominent design events. 


Kasper Heiselberg

PhD Student
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.110, 8000 Aarhus C

Kasper Heiselberg holds a master in Service Systems Designer from Aalborg University CPH, and a Bachelor of Science in IT Product development from Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University. During his master studies he has spend a semester at the University of Twente, studying Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society. Kasper are now focusing on his phd studies on self-tracking devices and systems for chronic ill.


Alumni

Karthikeya Acharya

Post Doctoral Associate

Karthikeya Acharya (Karthik) as a design researcher focuses on doing energy research through design practice. He has a doctorate in Design from Aalto University in Helsinki, a masters degree in Interaction Design from Domus Academy+IDII program in Milan and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Manipal University in India. He has gained industry experience working as a researcher with Fortum, the Finnish state energy corporation, as a design researcher and consultant with Nokia Design and Nokia Research Center and also as a professional architect with design studios in South India.


Troy Nachtigall

Post Doctoral Associate
Office: Inge Lehmanns Gade 10, bygning 3210, 04.110, 8000 Aarhus C

Troy Nachtigall is a Post Doctoral Researcher in the Socio-Technical Design group. Troy comes from a practice of Fashion Design concentrating on knitwear and shoes. His work focuses on personalization of clothing and accessories using data. Troy specialises on how designers can work with data to analyze, design, make, and use clothing that is tailored with the wearer. Troy holds Masters Degree in Industrial Design, an undergraduate degree in Fashion Design and has completed four years of research as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the ArcInTexETN.  His PhD thesis on Materializing Data will be defended at Eindhoven University of Technology during Dutch Design Week the 25th of October, 2019.


Miguel Bruns

Visiting Reseracher

Miguel Bruns is Associate Professor in the Future Everyday Group of the Department of Industrial Design of Eindhoven University of Technology and program director for the TU/e Innovation Space, a community for interdisciplinary hands-on education that bridges engineering design and entrepreneurship. He investigates the aesthetics and emotional expressivity of interactive products with programmable material qualities (interactive materiality) with a focus on haptic and shape-changing interfaces. He co-developed various prototypes of interactive products that respond to behavioural expressions with haptic feedback and shape change. He teaches courses relating to creativity and the basics of designing form and aesthetics of interaction at the bachelor’s degree level and courses relating to dynamic and interactive form/materiality and how this affects perception and behaviour at the master’s degree level. Miguel holds a PhD on affective tangible interaction and a MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from TU Delft and he has been a visiting researcher and lecturer at Aarhus University, Taiwan Tech and Stanford University.


Marie Broe

Intern

Marie Broe is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Marie did her internship at the Socio-technical group, as part of her 6th semester of her bachelor studies in Accessory Design at Design School Kolding. Marie is interested in technology for improving well being. Her focus is on patient needs, and development and formgiving in product design. In her internship, Marie worked on the design of devices for tracking allergy patients symptoms and medicine consumption.


Devarajan Ramanujan

Assistant Professor, PhD

Dev’s research focuses on creating human-centered decision-making tools for sustainable product design. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. At MIT, Dev worked on systems optimization and environmental sustainability assessment of  photovoltaic-powered electrodialysis brackish water desalination systems for the developing world. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA.  At Purdue, he worked in the [C] Design Lab on developing data representations methods for environmentally conscious product design.