Alex de Rijke

Dean of the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art

Founding Director of dRMM
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Designer, Artist
Anna Valtonen

Rector at Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University
Anne Toomey

Reader in Active and Interactive Materials in Design, Northumria University
Bradley Quinn

Writer and Design Critic
Chris Lefteri

Designer
Chris Wise

Director and Co-founder of Expedition Engineering
Christine Guth

Cultural Historian, Royal College of Art
Fiona Raby

Partner in Dunne & Raby

Professor of Industrial Design, University of Applied Arts in Vienna
Fiorenzo Omenetto

Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University
Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Journalist, Author
Katie Gaudion

Textile Designer

Research Associate, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
Manuel Kretzer

Architect at Responsive Design Studio

Researcher, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
Mark Miodownik

Professor of Materials & Society, UCL Mechanical Engineering Department
Martin Kemp

Chairman of IOM3 Nanomaterials Committee - Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network
Michael John Gorman

Founding Director, Science Gallery Dublin
Mike Davies CBE

Senior Director at Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners (formerly Richard Rogers Partnership)
Peter Yeadon

Architect, Decker Yeadon

Associate Professor, Rhode Island School of Design
Raymond Oliver

Professor of Interactive Materials, Northumbria University
Richard Wentworth

Head of Sculpture Department, Royal College of Art
Sarah Teasley

Design Historian, Royal College of Art
Sir Richard Friend, FRS, FREng

Cavendish Professor of Physics, Cambridge University
Sophie Duport

Neuroscientist, Royal Hospital for Neuro Disability
Susanne Küchler

Head of Department of Anthropology, UCL
Suzanne Lee

Designer, Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins
Thomas Thwaites

Interaction designer
Tony Dunne

Partner in Dunne & Raby

Head of Design Interactions, Royal College of Art

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Profile: Anna Valtonen

Anna Valtonen, Professor, is the Rector of UMEÅ INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, Umeå University, since 2009. Before this position she worked 12 years for Nokia, lately as Head of Design Research & Foresight.

Anna Valtonen’s research interests are in design&society, its history, and on the role of designers within. Her PhD, from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland (currently Aalto University) was on the professional development of industrial design practice. She has previously been active as a researcher at the Department of Strategic and Industrial Design at the same university and as visiting professor in the Department of Management at ESSEC Business School Paris, France. Valtonen also holds many positions of trust within universities, organisations and corporations.

Plenary: Materialising future aspects of Design

Design, its role in society and how it is used, has changed over time. How could we then envision what design could be in the future?

In the area of materials and innovation design can be used in many ways. Some of these might be new developments of previously known knowledge, others entirely new openings. What all of these have in common is that it is more challenging to envision or to discuss abstract concepts, than it is to talk about something with a tangible form.

Maybe we can find a way to materialize future aspects of design?