Jury Alumni

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  Dr. Deepa Butoliya

  Assistant Professor, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Captain

  Dr. Butoliya is a researcher and design educator based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her research is located at the intersection of models of knowledge and critical thinking emerging from multiple and global perspectives. She researches critique in design from pluriversal perspectives- especially grassroots critical practices in design. She has a background in design and architecture with a career spanning 15 years in multiple roles as an industrial designer, researcher, and educator across two continents. She wants to help create a sustainable, equitable, and inclusive environment for societies with local awareness and a global vision.

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  Ti Chang

  Co-founder & VP of Design, Crave

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Ti Chang is a design activist-entrepreneur and activist bridging modern design and activism. She is co-founder and VP of Design of CRAVE, a San Francisco-based company specializing in aesthetic pleasure products. Ti leads the design vision for the company’s full line of products which has won international design awards and has led CRAVE to mainstream partnerships with the likes of Nordstrom, MoMA Design Store, Goop, and Saint Laurent. 
  
  Ti is best known for her design of the Vesper vibrator necklace in 2014, an iconic necklace that symbolizes female empowerment and creating conversations to normalize pleasure. 
  
  Ti holds an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2021, Ti co-founded Design Allyship (designallyship.com) to provide anyone with actionable resources to improve the condition of historically marginalized designers in the industrial & product design industry. 
  

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  Laura Forlano

  Associate Professor of Design & Director of Critical Futures Lab, Illinois Institute of Design

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is an Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design and Affiliated Faculty in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology where she is Director of the Critical Futures Lab. Forlano’s research is focused on the aesthetics and politics at the intersection between design and emerging technologies. Over the past ten years, she has studied the materialities and futures of socio-technical systems such as autonomous vehicles and smart cities; 3D printing, local manufacturing and innovation ecosystems; automation, distributed labor practices and the future of work; and, computational fashion, smart textiles and wearable medical technologies. She is an editor of three books: Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press 2019), digitalSTS (Princeton University Press 2019) and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011). She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.

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  Veronica Ranner

  Designer | Artist | Ph.D. Candidate, Royal College of Art

  2021 Speculative Design Jury Member

  Veronica Ranner is an artist, designer and researcher, working transdisciplinary on the intersections of design, science and emerging technologies. With a background in industrial design and design interactions, her research focuses on the burgeoning domain of bio-digitality and encompasses advanced biomaterials (smart materials), biomedical product and interface design as well as the development of experimental methods towards constructive-collective modes of futuring (see Polyphonic Futures).
  
  Veronica has 10+ years experience of working internationally across science, education, art institutions and industry via funded projects, commissions and collaborations. She is a frequently invited lecturer and exhibits her work internationally, including at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, China Technology Museum in Beijing, the National Museum Sweden in Stockholm, the V&A London, the Design Museum Gent, at Martha Herford, and the Futurium in Berlin. She currently completes her PhD at the Royal College of Art.