MDes Alumni Design Fellows

The Master of Design (MDes) Alumni Design Fellows are graduates of the MDes program who spend dedicated time as volunteers for the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. The Fellows lead activities based on their areas of interest and expertise, participate in critiques in MDes courses and end of semester showcases, attend community events, and support MDes courses and recruitment and admissions efforts.  MDes students and instructors for the program are encouraged to directly contact MDes Alumni Design Fellows for advice and collaboration (see contact info below).

The MDes Alumni Design Fellows for the 2023-2024 academic year are:

 

Benal Johnson

Benal is a multidisciplinary designer with experience across industrial design, design strategy, UX/UI, tangible user interfaces, and speculative design. This combination of skills provides Benal the opportunity to design and communicate across disciplines in all types of projects and clients. As a designer at Tellart, Benal brings these skills together to shape different parts of each project, whether it be defining the guest experience of an installation or identifying the right aesthetic finishes for a space. She is always exploring the intersection between traditional craft and emerging technology through her personal and professional projects.

Get in touch with Benal via email (benal_johnson@berkeley.edu) to schedule an office hour.

 

Georgios Grigoriadis

Georgios Grigoriadis is a Designer and an Architect (of things), working with emerging technologies, future making and fabrication. He uses digital, physical tools and machines to design and build spaces, objects, experiences, worlds, words and tell stories about them.

He holds a Master of Design (MDes) from UC Berkeley and a Diploma (Master & Bachelor) of Architecture and Architecture Engineering from the School of Architecture of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. There, he was a researcher at the Innovative Environments research cluster working on several European research projects,  and academic related activities in the School of Architecture. George is the co-founder of the space design practice GHOST office (no place specific, 2019) and one of the founding members of the creative collective xyzzy (Thessaloniki, 2015-2018). He has been a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece since 2019. He is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a Lecturer at Berkeley MDes and a Design Technologist at Butlr Technologies.

Get in touch with Georgios by email (ggrigoriadis@berkeley.edu) or book a meeting with him during his office hours.

 

Jan Veicht

Jan is Head of Design at Schoolab, a global innovation company dedicated to designing a brighter future around impact and sustainability. 

He works at the intersection between education, entrepreneurship, and corporate innovation. As an industrial designer, he has worked in the luxury consumer goods industry for many years, designing accessories and lifestyle products for European and American fashion houses. He received his BA in Industrial Design from the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, graduated from the Berkeley Masters of Design in Emerging Technologies, and teaches Design & Innovation in the Berkeley Changemaker program at Berkeley Haas School of Business. You can learn more about his work here: www.jansimonveicht.com 

Get in touch with Jan via email (jan.veicht@berkeley.edu) to schedule an office hour.