Siobhan Francois Rockcastle, PhD, SMArchS, B.Arch
Assistant Professor of Architecture | University of Oregon
Associate Director of IHBE & Director of Baker Lighting Lab | University of Oregon
Co-Founder and Director of Design | OCULIGHT dynamics
Hans Fischer Fellow | Institute of Advanced Studies, Technical University of Munich
Associate Editor | LEUKOS, The Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society
Siobhan is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Director of the Baker Lighting Lab, Associate Director of IHBE, Hans Fischer Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at TU Munich, 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 lighting performance with a focus on well-being. At the University of Oregon, Siobhan teaches courses on studio design at the graduate and undergraduate levels, environmental design, building simulation, and lighting. Siobhan’s current research uses simulation and virtual reality to model experiential lighting environments and conduct experiments on human health and perception. 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 joined the editorial board of LEUKOS (the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society) as an Associate Editor in 2023. 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 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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