OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE STUDENTS Interior Architecture and Design Faculty Labs
Spatial Perception and Cognitive Experience Laboratory
The SPACE Lab investigates the impact of environmental stimuli on occupant perception, cognition, and performance in built environments, with particular attention to neurodiversity. Our research focuses on the multisensory spatial experience of diverse end-users, including neurodivergent individuals with special needs. To examine occupant experience in physical and virtual environments, our team utilizes various technologies, including building information modeling (BIM), eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), and virtual reality (VR).
Connected and Mediated Environments Laboratory
Our interdisciplinary lab investigates the role of connective technologies in assessing building design strategies, enhancing users’ experiences of interior environments, and mediating design communication practices. We measure the impact of design using a range of emerging connective technologies and tools such as augmented reality, space utilization sensors, 3D capture scanning, eye tracking, and virtual reality eye tracking.
Green Building Literacy Lab
The Green Building Literacy Lab is a research team dedicated to advancing green building education for youth and the general public. We examine the potential for green buildings to enhance sustainability education through building design, interpretive strategies and formal curriculum projects. Lab projects are interdisciplinary by nature integrating expertise from scholars across science and sustainability education, educational technologies, environmental psychology, and sustainable design and engineering.
Apparel and Merchandising Faculty Labs
Inclusive Innovations Laboratory
The Inclusive Innovations Lab is a dynamic group of faculty and graduate and undergraduate researchers dedicated to creating wearable product design solutions.
Fashion Sustainability Research Collaborative
Emerging macro trends suggest that fashion brands will increasingly focus on circular design and processes to inform and contribute to fashion industry’s transformation toward circularity. Taking a systems approach, this research cluster actively collaborates with different partners (industry, NGOs, educators) exploring topics that drive forward a circular economy agenda related to the fashion industry.
Smart Textiles and Nanotechnology Research Group
There is a constant need to upgrade the functions and performance of textiles and apparel for the improvement of protection and living conditions. Research is aimed at addressing this need by focusing on the development of multifunctional textiles and apparel through the application of nanotechnology. Research seeks to fundamentally understand, assess, and control the functionality and performance of fibers and fabrics at the nanoscale.