Data-Driven Design for Climate Action
October 2022 – October 2024
Objective
This research will apply data-driven design to Climate Action by utilizing data from design, manufacturing, and the entire product lifecycle to learn how early-stage decision-making maps to downstream carbon emissions for complex systems.
Background
Artificial Intelligence has transformed the fields of Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. Data-driven methods also have the potential to be a valuable tool in the fight against climate change, but not before such data is ready for computation. If data from product design, manufacturing, consumption, and retirement could be quantitatively represented for computation, then we could learn how to produce and consume more sustainably.
About the Digital Futures Postdoc Fellow
Haluk Akay completed his doctoral research in mechanical engineering at MIT. His doctoral thesis developed methods to represent textual design data for computation by extracting structured “what-how” information and evaluating designed systems using AI-based language modelling and design principles.
Haluk’s research interests lie in using design and data-driven methods to address complex climate change and sustainability problems. He also has experience in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication and product design.
Main supervisor
Francesco Fuso-Nerini, Associate Professor at KTH ITM
Co-supervisor
Iolanda Leite, Associate Professor, Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH
Watch the recorded presentation at the Digitalize in Stockholm 2023 event:
Contacts
Haluk Akay
Digital Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoc project: Data-Driven Design for Climate Action
haluk@alum.mit.edu
Francesco Fuso-Nerini
Associate Professor at KTH ITM, Director of KTH Climate Action Centre, Working group Smart Society, PI: Embedding AI in an innovative geospatial tool to support policy for clean cooking adoption in low- and middle-income countries, PI: Preserving a Rich Legacy of Swedish Engineering Design using Artificial Intelligence (SweDesAI), PI: Beyond 2030: Achieving the SDGs within the Planetary Boundaries, an AI-based approach, Co-PI: An AI-based framework for harmonizing climate policies and projects with the SDGs, Former Co-PI: Towards a Smart Society – the role of Digital Futures, Digital Futures Faculty
ffn@kth.se
Iolanda Leite
Associate Professor, Department of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH, Working group Learn, PI: Advanced Adaptive Intelligent Systems (AAIS), PI: Adaptive Intelligent Homes (AIH), Former Main supervisor: On The Feminist Design of Social Robots and Designing Robots For Young People, With Young People, Former Main supervisor: Designing Gamified Robot-Enhanced Interventions for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Digital Futures Faculty
iolanda@kth.se