Associate Professor Randy Deutsch AIA, LEED-AP, will have a new book to be published in October, Data-Driven Design and Construction: 25 Strategies for Capturing, Analyzing and Applying Building Data, 1st Edition (Wiley, 2015).  An additional new book, Convergence: An Integrated Framework for Architecture (AD, 2016).

He was a Keynote speaker at The Next Frontier: Mining and Leveraging Data in BIM, BIM Perspectives conference, The Graduate Center, CUNY, NYC, 2015.  He also gave/will give the following lectures:   Measuring the Immeasurable, Validating the Ineffable, New Jersey Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, 2015;  Public Lecture: What Leveraging Data Meansfor You, Your Career, Firm and Profession, AIANY Technology Committee, Centerfor Architecture, NYC; Lecture: The Data on Data-Centric Practices, Knowledge Architecture, KA Connect 2015, knowledge management conference, San Francisco, CA; Lecture: National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) 2015 Symposium, 50 Shades of Leadership, Urbana, IL, 2015; Lecture: Architects Design By Manipulating Data, Not Form, AIA Northeast Illinois, 2015.

He also delivered two talks at Building Technology Educators’ Society 2015 International Conference: Educating the Technology-Inclined Design Architect; & Data Driven Design in Education and Practice.

He was featured in “Deep Data: How Greater Intelligence Can Lead To Better Buildings,” by C.C. Sullivan, in Building Design + Construction magazine, June 2015, pp.43-46.  He was interviewed on BIM in education, BIMThoughts podcast S2E12, 2015. 

Professor Deutsch also developed and delivered an online course on design thinking, Architecture as a Second Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Fine and Applied Arts, 2015.

He was also invited as a Board Member, Advisor, UK-based Building Research Establishment (BRE) Advisory Board on BIM education in the US, 2015-16 and a Board Member, Virtual Builders, US BIM education, 2015-16.

During the summer Assistant Prof. Mark Taylor directed a summer design studio that worked in collaboration with Prosperity Gardens, a non-for profit organization who transforms vacant land into productive urban farm land.  Students investigated the adaptive re-use of a former police evidence building and produced designs for a wash, pack and storage facility to be located on a one acre site in downtown Champaign. Funding secured from ADM with allow the facility to be built in the coming year.