School of Architecture

Ryan Roark: Assistant Professor
Ryan Roark, PhD, AIA, is an architect, writer, biochemist, and incoming assistant professor at the UTK School of Architecture, where her research focuses on radical adaptive reuse as a strategy for urban and ecological sustainability. She studies and writes about the history of reuse, urbanism, and philosophies of (im)permanence and (im)permeability from the 16th century to the present. 

Prior to joining UTK, Roark was an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where her second-year B.Arch housing studio curriculum received the ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award. At IIT, she started the Novel Biomaterials Lab (now based at UTK), where she develops a range of new materials, primarily from seafood industry waste, for use in retrofits. For this research, she was a finalist for the Wheelwright Prize in 2024. She has also taught at Georgia Tech, where she was the 2019-22 Ventulett NEXT Generation Fellow, and at Rice University. 

Roark’s writing about changing attitudes to time, history, and life cycles over the past five centuries has appeared in JSAH, Pidgin, and Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, and in the books Ruskin’s Ecologies (Courtauld Books Online) and Life Forms (Snoeck Publishing), among others. She is currently preparing a translation of the 16th-century novel La Mariane du Filomène, whose settings—ranging from cityscapes to cultivated islands—reflect early modern ideas about nature, artifice, and cyclical life. 

Aram Yeretzian: Associate Professor
Aram Yeretzian is an architect, associate professor and a founding member of the Lebanon Green Building Council. He develops evidence-based approaches that address the relationship between the behavior of buildings and their occupants in Mediterranean and arid climates. Supported by 30 years of professional experience in designing climate responsive architectural and masterplan projects, his teaching and research also focus on low environmental impact construction materials.

Jia Weng: Assistant Professor
Jia Weng is an architectural designer, curator, and researcher. She recently completed her Ph.D. in architectural history and theory at Yale University, where she also earned a certificate in Film and Media Studies. Her dissertation, Architecture and Climatic Power: Control Valves, Fluid Territories, and Circulation in the Globalizing China, 1919–1995, explores the transnational exchange of environmental technologies and ideas between the United States and China during the 20th century. Focusing on control valves—devices that regulate air and water—it analyzes how these mechanisms reshaped circulatory regimes in architecture by fusing communication technologies with environmental systems. Introducing the concept of climatic power, the dissertation reframes architecture as a mediator of planetary forces such as heat, waste, and material flows. Her research was awarded the Carter Manny Research Award by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and has been supported by the Franke Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship and the MacMillan International Dissertation Research Fellowship. 

Jia was a research affiliate with the Research Network of Philosophy and Technology (2021–22) and served as a sectional curator for the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. She holds a B.Arch from Tsinghua University, a Master’s in Urban Design from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master’s in Environmental Design from Yale. Her thesis, Waste in the Water Machine: Pathologies of China’s Three Gorges Project, received the David Taylor Memorial Prize for Architectural Criticism. Before her doctoral studies, she practiced architecture at Kohn Pedersen Fox’s New York office, witnessing firsthand the rise and fall of joint-venture projects in China. 

Alongside her academic work, Jia has contributed to exhibitions and competitions internationally, including First Prize in the Jacques Rougerie Competition, the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016, 2018, 2021), and the Infrastructural Territory exhibition at OCAT Shanghai Gallery. Before joining the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she taught at the Yale School of Architecture, Yale College, Syracuse University, and Columbia GSAPP. 

Thomas Oommen: Assistant Professor
Thomas Oommen is an architect, urbanist, and historian of global modernism with experience in research, teaching, and practice across India and the United States. His work integrates perspectives from design, history, and theory to understand  “small places”- non-metropolitan locations with ordinary buildings and landscapes shaped by non-pedigreed actors, practices, and materials. Oommen argues that small places are vital for developing a more robust and global understanding of architectural modernism as well as the future of the built environment. 

Currently, his research explores the intersections of architecture, environment, and social change, focusing on the urban-rural continuums of Kerala in Southern India. It is based on his doctoral dissertation at Berkeley, “Small Places, Global Histories,” which is set against the global backdrop of the 1970s – a transitional decade in architecture shaped by changing ideas about the limits of economic growth, technology, energy use, and questions of human development and migration. 

Oommen brings his training in South Asia studies, eco-critical art history, Indian Ocean histories, and the history and philosophy of science to bear in his research. His writing has appeared in journals such as Architectural Theory Review, Architectural Histories, Journal of Planning History, International Development Planning Review, and the portal Architexturez South Asia. 

Isla Xi Han: Tennessee Architecture Fellow
Isla Xi Han is the Tennessee Architecture Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She holds a joint Ph.D. in Architecture and Materials Science and a professional Master of Architecture from Princeton University, along with a B.S. in Architecture and Economics from the University of Virginia. Her research interests lie in collective robotic construction and immersive technologies, ranging from design to computation to implementation. She has contributed to award-winning projects recognized by the 2021 ARCHITECT Magazine R+D Award, the 2021 Best Special Structure Award by SEAOI, and the 2024 MUSE Design Awards. She is the recipient of the 2025 Young CAADRIA Award and the 2016 AIA Virginia Prize. Her research has been published in journals and conferences such as Construction Robotics, International Journal of Architectural Computing, Advances in Architectural Geometry, IEEE VR, ACM/IEEE HRI, Origami 8, ACADIA, CAADRIA, ISIC, and ROB|ARCH. Her work in swarm robot design and human–machine co-creation has been exhibited internationally, including ICRA Robotics and Art exhibition and The Wrong New Media Biennale in Philadelphia, Galileo Week collateral exhibition in Rome, NeurIPS Creative AI exhibition in Vancouver, Art of Science exhibition in Princeton, and SHErobots exhibition in Sydney. Through interdisciplinary methods, she investigates how emerging technologies can shape future modes of design and construction.

School of Design 

Piper Schuerman: Assistant Professor
Piper Schuerman (she/her/hers) is a designer, educator, researcher, and illustrator who currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the School of Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her areas of research interest are design for civic engagement, methods of critique, and discourse facilitation. These themes were recently explored in her master’s thesis, Public Comment, which proposed the design critique as a model for facilitating citizen feedback at city council meetings. She has spoken about her work at national and international design conferences and has contributed to several collaborative published works and group exhibitions. Her professional experience spans diverse design environments such as a creative agency and production company, nonprofits, and in-house roles focused on B2B marketing. Piper obtained her BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Arkansas (2022), where she later returned to complete a Master of Design in Communication Design (2025). 

Stacy Kim: School of Design Fellow
Stacy Danbee Kim is a designer, researcher, and educator whose work explores the evolving relationship between design, technology, and culture. She holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from Seoul National University and a BA in Communication from Washington State University. 

Her creative practice spans graphic design, publishing, and interactive installations—bridging traditional and experimental visual forms. Her current research examines emerging technologies like generative AI through a sociopolitical lens, exploring how these tools shape visual culture, self-expression, and the dynamics of creative power. 

Alongside her research and creative work, Stacy brings professional experience in branding, marketing, and event production, working with clients across the arts, design, and f&b industries. Outside the classroom, she draws inspiration from embodied practices such as yoga, movement, and time in nature, as well as from her experiences living between cultures and traveling. These perspectives inform her holistic approach to creativity, teaching, and collaboration. 

School of Interior Architecture

Miyoung Hong: Assistant Professor
Miyoung Hong is a design researcher and educator who specializes in evidence-based design for healthcare and learning environments. Her research investigates how designed spaces influence human well-being and organizational health outcomes. With professional experience across Asia and the United States, Hong has developed expertise in commercial interiors spanning health and wellness facilities, hospitality venues, and workplace environments. She holds comprehensive industry credentials including LEED Accredited Professional in Building Design and Construction, WELL Accredited Professional, Evidence-Based Design Accreditation and Certification (EDAC), National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ) certificate, and Lighting Certified (LC) designation from the National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Professions (NCQLP). Hong contributes to the advancement of design practice and education through her presentations at prominent national and international conferences, including those hosted by the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) and the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC).

Aaron Neal: Assistant Professor
Aaron Neal is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interior Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Prior to joining the faculty, he taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was awarded the AICAD Post Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Aaron holds a Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Interior Architecture from Auburn University, and a Master of Arts in Adaptive Reuse as a Presidential Fellow from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has also practiced professionally in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Nashville. His research lies at the intersection of the preservation of heritage, the lingering effects of past public policy within minority communities, and adaptive reuse. Studying how public policies throughout history have often had detrimental effects on minority communities, Aaron is working to document the impact of the Federal Highway Act. 

German Valenzuela: Associate Professor of Practice
German Valenzuela is an architect from the Maritime University of Chile and Master in Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the Republic (Uruguay). 

He began his independent practice in 1998 and since 2016 has been a founding partner of Taller890, an architectural studio based in Talca. He served on the Board of Directors of the University of Talca and is co-founder of its School of Architecture (1999), where he teaches various undergraduate courses, including architectural design studios, research seminars, and final degree project supervision. 

The undergraduate studio Domestic Interventions was recently awarded at the 2022 Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (BIAU). Final degree projects developed with Susana Sepúlveda and Edgard Torres received the Archiprix awards in 2013 and 2017, respectively, while Pía Montero’s project was recognized with the Young Talent Architecture Award in 2020. A significant number of works developed in collaboration with students have been published and exhibited at various architectural events. 

He has organized and participated in numerous architecture dissemination events such as biennials and symposiums. He is the director of the seminar Contemporary Latin American Architecture: From Territory to Detail. In 2016, he served as an architectural advisor for the Chilean Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. 

He is the author of several publications, including Conversations from South to South (Arquine, 2025) and Del territorio al detalle (Bifurcaciones, 2021), the latter awarded at the BIAU 2022.