The Symposium will be hosted at:

Verizon Education Center

Cornell Tech

2 W Loop Rd, New York, NY 10044

Transit Options

• Roosevelt Island Tramway to / from Manhattan

• Subway via the F Train at the Roosevelt Island Station

• NYC Ferry via the Astoria Route at the Roosevelt Island Stop

8:00 am |

9:00 am |

9:00 am -10:20 am |

In Person Registration

Live Stream Begins | Welcome & Introduction

Morning Presentations

9:10 am |

Populous

Barbara Vasilatou

Principal, Head of Digital, EMEA

Barbara is the EMEA Digital Lead at Populous, overseeing the development of digital products for the sports and entertainment industry. A key example of her work is a custom seating bowl design tool that optimizes and streamlines the design process. An accomplished architect and computational design specialist, Barbara joined Populous in 2018 after advancing her expertise in computational technologies at the AA. She has led the design of major public entertainment venues across Europe and the Middle East, with a skill set spanning immersive user experience design, big data management, and generative design. Her leadership in architectural digitization and digital innovation has established her as a prominent figure at Populous and in the wider industry.

9:30 am |

To be Announced

—

9:40 am |

Raven

Moritz Rietschel

Founder

Moritz Rietschel is co-founder of Raven, building at the frontier of AI capabilities and CAD. His work builds on research at UC Berkeley from early 2024, bringing early LLMs into CAD as AI-collaborative tools with Prof. Kyle Steinfeld and robotic fabrication with Prof. Simon Schleicher. Moritz has lectured internationally on AI-based creative tools, published at ACADIA and the IJAC journal, hosted workshops at MIT and Tongji and contributed to international research conferences.

9:50 am |

To be Announced

—

10:00 am |

ZAHNER

Burcin Nalinci

Lead R&D Engineer

10:10 am |

To be Announced

—

10:30 am |

11:00 am |

Morning Presenters Q & A

Coffee Break

11:40 am |

AECtech Conversation

Host

Evan Troxel |TRXL Media

FOUNDER

—

Guest

To be Announced

—

12:30 pm |

1:30 pm - 3:20 pm |

Lunch Break

Afternoon Presentations

1:30 pm |

Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio

To Be Announced

—

1:50 pm |

StructureCraft & Branch

Dan Cascaval

Director of Software Engineering

Dan Cascaval is the Director of Software Engineering at Branch, where he is leading the technical development of Branch Concept, a novel concept-stage platform for real-time structural design and analysis. Formerly a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at the University of Washington, his work combines graphics, programming languages, and parametric modeling in the service of evolving AEC technology into the next generation. Branch is incubated at StructureCraft, where it spans between real projects in the field to looking forward at the changing role of software in an AI-native future, and pushing AEC software forward from rigid workflows into intent-driven interactions.

Lily Hui Huang

Product Director

Lily Huang leads product for Branch Concept, a web-based platform for structural optioneering that brings real-time structural sizing, embodied carbon, and supplier constraints into a single view, so design teams can shape the structure around each project's goals. A former practicing architect, her interest is in empowering designers to use data to advance conversations on sustainability and affordability in the built environment, and in closing the loop between the people who design buildings and the people who fabricate them.

2:10 pm |

To be Announced

—

2:30 pm |

VIA

Keyan Rahimzadeh

Principal, Global Technical Director

Keyan Rahimzadeh is a structural engineer and architect who has spent his career building complex facades, and the software to make it possible. After 10 years working on high-profile projects at Front, Inc. in New York and London, he led Computational Design at Grimshaw, and built software at a venture-backed AEC startup. He is now a Principal and Global Technical Director at VIA, where he oversees the technical initiatives of the practice, including software development and automation across design, analysis, and fabrication.

2:50 pm |

3:20 pm |

Afternoon Presenters Q&A

Coffee Break

4:00 pm |

Roundtable | Industrialized Construction

—

AECtech Update

Presenter to be announced

—

8:00 am |

9:00 am |

9:00 am -10:20 am |

In Person Registration

Live Stream Begins | Welcome & Introduction

Morning Presentations

9:10 am |

Foster + Partners

Martha Tsigkari

Senior Partner, Head of Applied R&D

Martha Tsigkari is a Senior Partner and Head of the Applied R+D (ARD) group at Foster + Partners. Her background spans architecture, engineering, and computer science. She has two decades of experience working on projects of all scales and uses. Her work incorporates computational design, human-computer interaction, machine learning, and optimization. She has investigated the usage of deep neural networks and genetic algorithms in the design process, aiming to solve problems ranging from passively actuated micromaterials to performance-driven urban layouts. She is also an Associate Professor at the Bartlett, UCL, and has lectured and published on the subject of computational design internationally.

9:30 am |

Nomic

Andriy Mulyar

Founder & CEO

—

9:40 am |

Motif

Matt Jezyk

VP, Strategy and Industry Solutions

Matt Jezyk spent over two decades at Autodesk, contributing significantly to the development of Revit Architecture and Revit Structure. He also led the team responsible for Dynamo, a computational design tool widely adopted in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry.

Matt was most recently at Tesla, where he developed software to streamline the design, fabrication, and construction processes for the company’s Gigafactories.

Throughout his career, Matt has been instrumental in integrating computational and generative design with digital fabrication tools and robotics, and has presented his work at conferences such as ACADIA, SmartGeometry, and Robots in Architecture.

9:50 am |

To be Announced

—

10:00 am |

Reope

Joachim Viktil

CEO

—

10:10 am |

TestFit

Clifton Harness

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

From a real estate development family, Clifton Harness fell in love with architecture at a young age and went on to obtain a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Texas. He soon found the need to bridge the gap between design and development, which led him to found TestFit with his cofounder, Ryan Griege, in 2017. Clifton strives to reinvent the development process to build what the world needs, fast.

10:30 am |

11:00 am |

Morning Presenters Q & A

Coffee Break

11:40 am |

Roundtable | AI in AECO Verticals

12:30 pm |

1:30 pm - 3:20 pm |

Lunch Break

Afternoon Presentations

1:30 am |

Shimizu Corporation Digital Design Center

Hiroyoshi SATAKE

Center Director

—

Algorithm Design Lab

Tamaho Shigemura

Founder and CEO

—

1:50 am |

xFigura

George Guida

Founder & CEO

George is the Founder & CEO of xFigura, a collaborative AI platform built for architects. xFigura brings together cutting-edge AI tools for concept ideation, visualization, and 3D workflows - already in use by thousands of users in leading global architecture firms and universities.

2:00 pm |

CityWeft

Alexander Groth

Co-Founder

2:10 pm |

KPF

Luc Wilson

Director

Luc is the Global Director of Design Technology at KPF, which encompasses computational design, BIM, visualization, digital fabrication, data analytics, research, and software development. In particular, Luc founded the Urban Interface team (KPFui,) which leverages data and develops technology to understand city building and tackle 21st-century urban challenges. He believes that smart cities & buildings are not about drones, sensors, or autonomous vehicles. A truly smart city should leverage data for design and utilize technology to increase transparency and accessibility. He has taught previously at NYU and Cornell and most recently helped develop the new Computational Design Practices masters program at Columbia, where he teaches one of the core courses.

2:30 pm |

Perkins & Will

Nick Cameron

Principal, Director of Digital Practice

Nick Cameron is an architect and Firmwide Director of Digital Practice at Perkins&Will, where he leads innovation across design, delivery, data, and emerging technology. Drawing on his architectural background and commitment to design excellence, Nick is responsible for integrating modeling, simulation, AI, and custom tools into the firm’s daily practice. He drives scalable solutions that amplify creativity, improve collaboration, and connect knowledge to deliver a more resilient built environment for clients and the communities they serve.

2:50 pm |

3:20 pm |

Afternoon Presenters Q&A

Coffee Break

4:00 pm |

Panel | AEC Over the Horizon

5:00 pm |

AECtech Closing Statements

ROBERT OTANI | Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio

CTO

Robert K. Otani, PE LEED AP is Chief Technology Officer at Thornton-Tomasetti, Inc., a 1700+ person multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm, and founded the CORE studio, an applications development, advanced computational modeling, and R&D group at his firm. He has extensive structural design and project management experience involving commercial, infrastructure, institutional, cultural and residential structures on projects totaling over $2 billion USD of construction. His professional and academic interests focus on informed architecture relating to optimized structural typologies, high performance structures, and structural sustainability. He has served as President of the Structural Engineers Association of New York in 2007 and has been an Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute School of Architecture and Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.