Elif Sezen Yagmur-Kilimci

Teaching & research interests

• Design cognition
• Visual-spatial reasoning 
• Spatial cognition
• Representation in design
• Design education
• Computational design
• Design data visualization
• Building information models

Elif earned her PhD in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has since served as a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture and a faculty member in the Architectural Design Computing Graduate Program at Istanbul Technical University. Throughout her academic career, she has taught a range of courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including foundational design, basic design, architectural design studios, visualization techniques, computational design methods and tools, design cognition, visual-spatial cognition, computer programming, and research methods.

In her teaching and research, Elif focuses on design, computing and cognition in the context of architecture. Her primary motivation in research has been to support design of representations and systems that facilitate designer’s creation of, or the user’s experience within, large-scale spaces such as urban and building environments, in both real and virtual contexts. In her teaching, she puts emphasis on supporting students’ developing design thinking skills and discovering the potentials of different mediums e.g. various forms of representations, computational approaches, for thinking about different aspects of their designs.

• PhD in Architecture: Design Cognition & Design Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology (2010)
• Master of Science in Building Science, Middle East Technical University (2002)
• Bachelor of Architecture, Middle East Technical University (2000)