PEOPLE

Anya Sirota Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives + Associate Professor of Architecture

Anya Sirota is an architectural designer, Associate Professor, Associate Dean of Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and founding principal of Akoaki. Her work, situated at the intersection of architecture and urban design, explores how a distinct synthesis of aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming can offer contemporary and multi-disciplinary strategies for urban transformation. Her ongoing research and design efforts have received international recognition with recent projects featured at the Vitra Design Museum, the Brussels Design Museum, the Centro Pecci Prato, the Saint Etienne Design Biennale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She is the recipient of the Architectural League Prize (2018), the ACSA Faculty Design Award (2016), the SXSW Eco Place by Design Award (2015), and the R+D Award from Architect Magazine (2013), and other honors. Sirota regularly contributes to international lectures, panels, workshops, and expositions addressing socially driven architectural practice and its impact on cities.

Sirota earned her Master in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the Araldo Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University.

asirota@umich.edu                ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎

Ishan Pal Singh
TVLab Director + Lecturer

Ishan Pal Singh is a licensed architect (India), educator and the Design Technologist for the Academic Initiatives at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He received a Master of Architecture from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and a Bachelor of Architecture at Sushant School of Architecture, Delhi NCR, India. While at Taubman College he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi Award for leadership. In India he established his own private practice and was awarded IIDA Best of Asia Pacific Design Award for his BGIF Office project.  His most recent work explores architecture’s blended future by experimenting with extended reality and social media tools. Currently he is leading the efforts in the development of the Taubman Visualization Lab (TVLab). He is also the producer and technician of numerous digital and hybrid events which can be found here.

ishanpal @umich.edu                ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎

Jacob Comerci
Academic Innovation Project Manager + Lecturer in Architecture

Jacob Comerci is a designer and educator. He is the 2019- 2020 William Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan. He received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. While at Princeton, he was awarded the Howard Crosby Butler traveling fellowship where he studied building groups in Berlin as well as the Suzane Kolarik Underwood thesis prize for excellence in design. He has previously worked with Bureau Spectacular in Chicago and Los Angeles and with MOS Architects and LTL Architects in New York.

His research and design work reconsiders models for collective life and work by way of the interior fit-out of existing real estate with furniture-scaled domestic equipment.

comerci@umich.edu                ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES

Martin Rodriguez Jr
Research Associate + Taubman Visualization Resident

Martin Rodriguez Jr. is an architectural designer, researcher, and educator working across digital media, representation, and public facing spatial experimentation. He earned his M.Arch 3G from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, graduating with High Distinction, and his work has been recognized with honors including Metropolis Future100 (2025), the Taubman College Distinction Award, and thesis awards in Representation and New Media and in History, Theory, and Framing.

His research and design work focuses on how emerging technologies like AI, projection based environments, and mixed reality can shape architectural experience and cultural meaning, treating ornament, interface, atmosphere, and storytelling as serious design tools that stay rigorous while remaining textured, inclusive, and deeply human.


Mrbf@umich.edu                  ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎    ︎

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS