Elisa Giaccardi
Role at IT:U
As a Fellow Professor of Design Intelligences at IT:U, Prof. Giaccardi contributes to the strategic development of teaching and research in more-than-human design and AI, focusing on how human, artificial, and ecological forms of intelligence can be understood and integrated to foster regenerative design. Her work advances design as a transformative practice for engaging complex ecological and technological systems.
Research group:
Prof. Giaccardi leads the Design Intelligences research group, a multispecies, multiagent, and multisite collective based at Politecnico di Milano and extending into the Computational X program at IT:U. The group explores intelligence as plural, relational, and more-than-human, bringing together design, AI, and ecological thinking to investigate how human, artificial, and ecological intelligences can be integrated for regenerative futures. They move beyond individual or computational models, framing intelligence as distributed across bodies, environments, and infrastructures. Through research-through-design, they examine how interfaces and materials mediate relations among intelligences, fostering new forms of planetary habitability.
Short bio:
Elisa Giaccardi is Full Professor of Design at Politecnico di Milano, 2024 Ambassador of Italian Design in the World, and one of the 50 most influential women in tech in Italy (Inspiring Fifty Italy 2024). Her international career spans five countries and 25 years of research at the intersection of design, technology, and post-humanist thought.
She currently directs the Design Intelligence Institute, a multispecies, multiagent and multisite collective dedicated to addressing planetary challenges through more-than-human design.
Her academic research has been widely published in top international journals and presented at major conferences and global organizations such as UNESCO and TEDx. As a top scientist, she has received numerous prestigious awards, including fellowships and recognitions from TU Delft, Politecnico di Milano, and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
Throughout her career, she has co-founded and contributed to several interdisciplinary research and educational programs, including the European innovative training network DCODE, the TU Delft AI Initiative in the Netherlands, the Digital Living Initiative at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain, and the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States. She has also served as a PI and Ambassador to the Amsterdam Metropolitan Solutions Institute.
She serves on the editorial boards of Human-Computer Interaction, Designing, and the Springer book series Design Research Foundations, and is Series Editor of the newly established Palgrave Studies in More-than-human Design.
Across all these roles, spanning research, education, and publishing, she continues to advance design research and interdisciplinary collaboration, shaping contemporary scholarship in design and technology.
