SASADA PRIZE
From 2019, the Sasada Prize follows the discontinued Sasada Award (awarded from 2007 until 2016), which was instituted in the memory of Prof. Tsuyoshi Sasada (1941-2005), former Professor of Osaka University, co-founder and Fellow of CAADRIA, a prolific researcher and teacher from whose lab over 200 students have graduated, and better known as “Tee” in the community.
The Sasada Prize carries no monetary award. From 2019, the annual Sasada Prize will be given to an individual whose sustained record of contributions demonstrates or promises significant impact on the field of computer aided design. In keeping with Tee’s spirit, the award recipient will have contributed to the next generation of researchers and academics, to the wider profession and practice in computer aided design and research, and earned recognition in peer community.
Sasada Prize Recipients
2026. Professor Yasushi Ikeda
Yasushi Ikeda is Professor of Architectural Informatics in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo. His research has made an important contribution to the development of architectural informatics and to the broader integration of digital technologies within architectural and urban design. His work examines architecture as an information medium and explores how computational methods can transform the ways in which built environments are conceived, produced, experienced, and adapted. His research spans computational design, digital construction, cyber-physical systems, environmental information sharing, simulation, and human–machine collaboration. Through both academic research and practical projects, he has investigated the use of computational generation and optimisation in design, data-linked and automated construction processes, interactive digital models, and new forms of collaboration between designers, machines, materials, and information systems. More recently, his research has also addressed digitally supported circular construction, including the use of computational and fabrication technologies to extend the lifecycle and reuse of timber materials. Across these areas, Ikeda has consistently connected emerging digital technologies with architectural practice and education, contributing to the advancement of computational design research in Japan and internationally. In 2026, he was awarded the CAADRIA Sasada Prize in recognition of his continuing international contribution to architectural informatics and his significant influence on related fields.
2022. Professor Ramesh Krishnamurti
Ramesh Krishnamurti is Emeritus Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has supervised many Master and PhD students who have subsequently become prominent members in the CAAD community and who, in the meantime, have made their own mark in supervising the next generation of researchers. His contribution is especially remarkable since he doesn’t have an architecture degree, but degrees in electrical engineering, computer science and systems design. Yet, he has served as a faculty member in the School of Architecture at CMU for over 30 years . His research and his PhD supervision have always had a multidisciplinary flavor. And while his core research has been on shape grammars and formal, semantic, and algorithmic aspects of generative design, for which he is well known and appreciated, he has explored a much broader range of research. His research has covered object-agents in design environments, knowledge-based design systems, the integration of natural language and graphics, spatial algorithms, robotic construction, computer simulation, computer graphics and graphical programming environments, user-interfaces for a variety of design applications, and computer-supported collaborative work. With respect to his supervision, he has always put the student first, supporting them in their research, rather than aligning them with his own research. He has also always been available for very open and direct discussions on any topic of relevance.
2021. Professor António Menezes Leitão
The 2021 Sasada Prize has been awarded to António Menezes Leitão at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. Antonio is the Scientific Coordinator of the Software Engineering Group at INESC-ID, and Coordinator of the Architecture and Computation Group at Tecnio Lisboa. In making its award, the committee was impressed by the focus of António’s research, the quality of his contributions and, in particular, with the significant number of his research students whom he has supported to attend research conferences widely as they establish themselves in the research community. The committee members can recall the high quality of papers and presentations in these sessions over the years. The committee has heard from a number of these students who consistently report that he is a committed teacher that is highly sought after and that he is a valued mentor. He has established the research group Algorithm Design for Architecture that welcomes participation from students and young researchers that has developed a strong community committed to design and computation research. These are qualities that reflect the memory of our friend Tee Sasada. We are pleased to recognize António Leitão with the award of the 2021 Sasada Prize.
2020. Professor Ellen Yi-Luen Do
Professor Ellen Do Yi-luen is an enthusiastic djembe player who has dedicated her career to researching computational support of creativity. Her early work focussed on sketching with the development of the ‘electronic cocktail napkin’, since then her work continues in the use of digital tools for unstructured drawings and their interpretation, in tangible and embedded interactions and, more recently, computing for health and wellness. Today, she is Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director, ATLAS Partnerships & Innovation. She earned her bachelor’s degree from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and her doctorate in Design Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology. She has served on the faculties of University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2013 to 2016, she co-directed the Keio-NUS CUTE Center in Singapore, a research unit investigating Connected Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments.
2019. Professor Ji-Hyun Lee
Ji-Hyun Lee is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Culture Technology in KAIST. She received her Ph.D. in School of Architecture (Computational Design) at Carnegie Mellon University writing a thesis about integrating housing design and case-based reasoning. Since joining the GSCT at KAIST, her research focus narrowed down to three interdisciplinary areas that are not mutually exclusive: (1) calculation for UX + service design, (2) cultural DNA with morphological analysis, and (3) computational creativity. These explorations result in computer-based frameworks or systems contributing to the enhancement of the calculability using algorithmic and/or heuristic computational methods. In other words, her research focus is on ‘computational culture’ as an extension of computational design. She served for the Secretary of Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) from 2008 to 2010. Currently, she is the Director of the Information-Based Design (IBD) Research Group in KAIST. She also serves as an Editor-in-chief of Korea Institute of Design Research Society (KIDRS), a Director of Korean Society of Service Design and Innovation (KSSDI), Korean Society of Design Science (KSDS) and HCI Korea (KHCI). She is a Task Force member of IEEE CIS ISATC: Intelligent Adaptive Fault Tolerant Control, Optimization and Reliability and a member of AIK, KIISS, Society of Computational Design & Engineering and SIG-Design Creativity of the Design Society.
Sasada Award Recipients
The Sasada Award honors the late Prof. Tsuyoshi Sasada (1941-2005), formerly Professor of Osaka University, and co-founder and Fellow of CAADRIA. It is given to someone who has contributed to the next generation of researchers and academics, to the wider profession and practice in computer-aided design and research, and earned recognition in the peer community. The recipient spends a week in residence at Osaka University.
2016. Professor Jin-Yeu Tsou
Prof. Tsou is a Professor of the School of Architecture and the Director of the Center for Housing Innovations, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the Member of Committee of Science & Technology, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China; the Chief Advisor for the Low Carbon Green City Implementation of San Shan New Town in Guang Zhou; the Member of Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) Technical Committee, Australia; the Board of Director and Reviewer of the International Society for Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (ISCCBE); the Founding Member and Past President of Computer Aided Architectural Design in Asia (CADDRIA); the Founding member and the Strategic Partnership of the Environmental Design Studies for Public Housing Development with the Hong Kong Housing Authority; and the Member of the United States National CAD Standard Project of the National Institute of Building Sciences.
2014. Professor Mary Lou Maher
Prof. Mary Lou Maher is Professor and Chair, Department of Software and Information Systems; Director, Center for Education Innovation, College of Computing and Informatics, University of North Carolina Charlotte, and the Honorary Professor of Design Computing, Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Planning ,The University of Sydney.
Mary Lou’s research interests span a broad area of design and computing, specifically the study and development of novel interaction and communications technology, and models of design and creativity. Her research draws on and contributes to human-computer interaction, intelligent systems, computer-supported collaborative work, design science, and computational creativity. Her current research has a focus on developing social-computational models and new technology as we scale up from creativity enhancing human-computer interaction, through effective collaborative systems, to large-scale and highly motivating collective intelligence and crowdsourcing. Some highlights of her recent research are: developing models of motivation, innovation, and diversity in collective intelligence, designing tangible and immersive interaction environments and evaluating their impact on creative cognition; the design and study of virtual worlds for collaboration and education; and developing computational models of curiosity for extending the functionality of search and motivated reinforcement learning algorithms.
2012. Professor Mark Burry
Prof. Mark Burry is Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture) and Director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of “Gaudi’ Unseen”, “Sagrada Fami’lia XXI. Gaudi’ ara / ahora / now”, and, with Jane Burry, “The New Mathematics of Architecture”.
2010. Professor Julio Bermudez
Julio Bermudez is an architect, scholar, educator, and researcher whose work has made significant contributions to architectural design, digital media, and design education. During his time at the University of Utah from 1993 to 2010, his research focused particularly on the interaction between design processes and computers, as well as on the use of architectural thinking in the design of complex information environments. This work led to the development of influential analog-digital design methods and interdisciplinary research in information visualisation. Bermudez has taught architectural design, communication, and theory for several decades. He also played an important role in the development of the international computational design community as a co-founder and co-leader of SIGraDi, the Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics, between 1997 and 2005. His academic work has consistently explored connections across architecture, computation, representation, culture, and human experience. His later research expanded into architectural phenomenology, spirituality, and neuroscience, examining how architecture affects human perception and experience. He has published extensively across these fields and has received numerous recognitions for both research and teaching. In 2010, he received the Sasada Award from CAADRIA in recognition of his significant record of international scholarship and service.
2009. Professor Andre Brown
André Brown is an architect, researcher, and educator whose career has contributed significantly to architectural computing, interdisciplinary design, and the development of the international computer-aided architectural design community. A long-standing member of the Liverpool School of Architecture, he later served as Head of the School from 2009 to 2013 and became Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool in 2018. He has also held senior academic and leadership positions internationally, including at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His research has focused on the application of innovative, sustainable, and appropriate technologies at both building and urban scales. Alongside his research and teaching, Brown has played an important role in developing the institutional networks of architectural computing. He served as President of eCAADe, the Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, and has been closely involved with the organisation throughout his career. Brown has also made an important contribution to scholarly communication in the field as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Architectural Computing, which has become an established international forum for research at the intersection of architecture and computation. He received the Tee Sasada Award in 2009 in recognition of his contribution to computer-aided architectural design research, education, and the wider international CAAD community.
2008. Professor Robert Woodbury
Robert Woodbury is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University and a leading researcher in computational design, parametric design, visual analytics, and end-user programming. Trained in architecture, he holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carleton University and Master of Science and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. Over the course of his academic career, he has held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Adelaide, the Technical University of British Columbia, and Simon Fraser University. Woodbury’s research has been particularly influential in advancing computational and parametric approaches to design. His work examines how computational systems can support designers in exploring relationships, alternatives, and changing design parameters rather than treating digital tools simply as mechanisms for representation. He has published extensively in computational design and is the author of Elements of Parametric Design, an important contribution to the teaching and understanding of parametric design methods. Beyond his individual research, Woodbury has contributed significantly to the development of design research communities. He was the founding Graduate Program Chair in Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University and served as Scientific Director of the Canadian Design Research Network. His work has connected architectural computing with interaction design, visual analytics, sustainability, and emerging digital design practices. In 2008, he received both the Innovative Research Award from ACADIA and the Tee Sasada Award from CAADRIA in recognition of his contribution to computational design research.
2007. Professor Mao-Lin Chiu
Mao-Lin Chiu is Professor in the Department of Architecture at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and has made longstanding contributions to research and education in computer-aided architectural design. His work has explored the relationship between computation, architectural design, digital environments, and human interaction, with particular interests in collaborative design, design knowledge, virtual environments, smart spaces, and digital approaches to understanding cities. Across his research, Chiu has investigated how digital technologies can support architectural knowledge and design processes. His work has included case-based design and digital case libraries, spatial information retrieval, collaborative architectural design, ubiquitous computing and context-aware environments, as well as the digital representation and preservation of urban and architectural heritage. An example is his research on historical Tainan, which used computer visualisation and digital information to document and interpret relationships between historic buildings and the city. Chiu has also contributed substantially to the wider international CAAD research community through publications, conferences, and editorial activities. He was among the editors of Digital Design: Research and Practice, the proceedings of the 2003 CAAD Futures conference hosted at National Cheng Kung University, and has been involved in disseminating research on digital cities and smart environments. In 2007, Mao-Lin Chiu became the first recipient listed for the CAADRIA Sasada Award, established in memory of Professor Tsuyoshi Sasada and recognising sustained contributions and influence within the computer-aided architectural design community.