The TUM GNI warmly welcomes its new director Prof. Ian Smith who will be the Founding Director of the TUM Georg Nemetschek Institute for three years, starting 1st March, 2022.
Ian Smith is Professor Emeritus at EPFL and has been working very successfully on Artificial Intelligence for the Built World as well as many related areas for decades. Furthermore, his worldwide collaborations in this field are a guarantee to quickly establish the GNI as a highly visible and excellently networked institution.
He is also Professor Emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He received his PhD from Cambridge University, UK in 1982. His research interests are on intersections of computer science with the built environment. In 2003, he co-authored the text book Fundamentals of Computer-Aided Engineering (Wiley) and the 2nd edition appeared in June 2013. In 2004, he was elected to the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and in 2005, he received the Computing in Civil Engineering Award from the ASCE. He has been an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, USA since 2011. From 2010 to 2020, he directed a second research group in Asia as Principal Investigator at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory, CREATE, Singapore. In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Construction, USA see.