Design Computing and Cognition '08

The importance of research and education in design continues to grow. For example, government agencies are gradually increasing funding of design research, and increasing numbers of engineering schools are revising their curricula to emphasize design. This is because of an increasing realization that design is part of the wealth creation of a nation and needs to be better understood and taught. The continuing globalization of industry and trade has required nations to re-examine where their core contributions lie if not in production efficiency. Design is a precursor to manufacturing for phy- cal objects and is the precursor to implementation for virtual objects. At the same time, the need for sustainable development is requiring design of new products and processes, and feeding a movement towards design - novations and inventions. There are now three sources for design research: design computing, design cognition and human-centered information technology. The foun- tions for much of design computing remains artificial intelligence with its focus on ways of representation and on processes that support simulation and generation. Artificial intelligence continues to provide an environm- tally rich paradigm within which design research based on computational constructions can be carried out. Design cognition is founded on concepts from cognitive science, an even newer area than artificial intelligence. It provides tools and methods to study human designers in both laboratory and practice settings.

JOHN GERO is a Research Professor at the Krasnow Institute of Advanced Study and at the Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering, George Mason University and a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Formerly he was Professor of Design Science and Co-Director of the Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, at the University of Sydney. He is the author or editor of 43 books and over 550 papers in the fields of design science, design computing, artificial intelligence, computer-aided design, design cognition and cognitive science. He has been a Visiting Professor of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science or Cognitive Science at MIT, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia and CMU in the USA, at Strathclyde and Loughborough in the UK, at INSA-Lyon and Provence in France and at EPFL-Lausanne in Switzerland. His former doctoral students are professors in the USA, UK, Australia, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

He has been the recipient of many excellence awards including the Harkness Fellowship, two Fulbright Fellowships, two SRC Fellowships and various named chairs. He is on the editorial boards of numerous journals related to design science, computer-aided design, artificial intelligence and knowledge engineering and is the chair of the international conference series Artificial Intelligence in Design, the new conference series Design Computing and Cognition and the international conference series Computational Models of Creative Design.