Siobhan is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Director of the Baker Lighting Lab, and co-founder of OCULIGHT dynamics, a company offering specialized daylight design support to promote healthy indoor occupation. She explores topics at the intersection of architectural design, environmental dynamics, human perception, and daylight performance with a focus on well-being. Siobhan’s current work uses simulation and virtual reality to model and design experiential lighting environments. She serves on the Board of SimAUD (Simulation in Architecture and Urban Design) and was the general chair for SimAUD 2019 in Atlanta, GA. She received her PhD in 2017 from the LIPID lab in the Doctoral Program in Architecture and Sciences of the City (EDAR) at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL). Her doctoral dissertation was awarded a ‘special distinction’ as one of 9 dissertations short-listed for the Top Thesis Prize from across all EPFL doctoral programs in 2017.
Siobhan earned her professional BArch from Cornell University in 2008, graduating with the Alpha Rho Chi Medal and her SMArchS degree in Building Technology from MIT in 2011, graduating with a top thesis award from the department of architecture. She was a teaching associate at Cornell in 2008, where she taught first year studio design courses. In 2011, Siobhan received a teaching fellowship at Northeastern University where she coordinated and taught 5th year comprehensive architectural design, advanced topics in daylight performance, and environmental systems. Her professional work experience includes 2 years of project management at KVA matX in Boston where she worked on the Minneapolis riverFIRST development initiative, Beaver Wood Vault, Solar Soft Rockers and 3M Sunlight Delivery project. Before the start of her PhD, Siobhan worked for Snøhetta NY, MSR design in Minneapolis, Epiphyte lab in Ithaca, and Gensler NY. She consults on lighting design integration and environmental performance for a number of architectural and urban-scale projects in Switzerland and the USA. As a continuation of her work at MIT, Siobhan’s PhD research proposed new metrics that predict the impacts of daylight and spatial composition on perception and emotion in architecture. She has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed papers on lighting perception and simulation and presented her research at IBPSA, SimAUD (Best paper award in 2012), Velux Daylight Symposium, PLEA, LUX EUROPA, LIGHTFAIR International, and Transsolar Research Days.
