A designer and researcher working at the intersection of embodied sensing systems and emerging materials and their relationship to meaning-making, Despina has engineered novel solutions for soft-to-hard interfaces, pioneered applications and processes for a stack of smart polymer technologies, and developed award-winning wearable environments that explore intimacy, ambiguity and markers of aliveness in encounters with technological systems. Her portfolio is extensive, with collaborations and developed projects with Lubrizol, Nivea, Ralph Lauren, Bless, and with engineers, fashion designers, quantum physicists, weavers, molecular engineers, and philosophers.

Despina consults C-suite executives on innovation methodologies, business opportunities in emerging technologies, and new product introduction roadmaps. She currently a faculty member at MFA Design for Social Innovation and has been teaching at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program for the past 18 years, where she developed the course and upcoming book The Softness of Things: Technology in Space and Form. She currently working on The Unruliness of Matter, turning the conceptual and abstract into the tangible and sensory, as part of my practice-based research Ph.D. at the Royal College of Art, on a TECHNE Fellowship from the National Productivity and Innovation Fund, UK.

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