Siobhan Francois Rockcastle, PhD, SMArchS, B.Arch
Associate Professor of Architecture | University of Oregon
Co-Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Architecture | University of Oregon
Co-Director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment
Director of Baker Lighting Lab | University of Oregon
Co-Founder and Director of Design | OCULIGHT dynamics
Siobhan is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Director or Graduate Studies for the Department of Architecture in Eugene, Director of the Baker Lighting Lab, Co-Director of IHBE, and co-founder of OCULIGHT dynamics, a company offering specialized daylight design support to promote healthy indoor occupation. She recently completed a 3-year Hans Fischer Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies at TU Munich. She explores topics at the intersection of architectural design, environmental dynamics, human perception, and lighting performance with a focus on well-being. At the University of Oregon, Siobhan teaches studios and lecture courses on environmental design, building simulation, and lighting at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her efforts were recognized with a Teaching Excellence Award from the UO College of Design in 2024 and an AIA COTE Top Ten Student Award in 2024. Siobhan’s research uses building simulation to model experiential lighting environments and conduct experiments on human health and perception using subjective and physiological feedback. She was awarded the 2021 ARCC New Researcher Award and was on the organizing committee of two SimAUD symposia as Scientific Chair in 2018 and General Chair in 2019. Siobhan served on the editorial board of LEUKOS (the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society) as an Associate Editor in from 2023-2025. 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’ and was 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 Europe and the United States. 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 more than 30 peer-reviewed research papers and was awarded the ‘Best Paper’ at SimAUD 2012 and again at SimAUD 2020. Since her arrival at University of Oregon in 2018, Siobhan has brought in more than $400,000 in external funding as PI/Co-PI. During her time at EPFL, she co-authored 350,000 CHF worth of successful grant applications and was awarded 46,000 CHF in start-up funding to launch OCULIGHT dynamics.
Education
PhD, Laboratory of Integrated Performance In Design, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 2017.
SMArchS, Building Technology Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA, 2011.
B.Arch, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, 2008.
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