Endowed Professorships
The IDC Foundation has endowed the following three professorships, which are shown below with the individuals who currently hold those positions:
IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)
Hilary Sample is the inaugural IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design and is Sequence Director of the Core Architecture Studios at GSAPP. She was awarded a Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome for 2022-2023.
She is a Co-Founder of the New York-based architecture and design studio MOS, which has won major national and international awards; its work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard University’s Frances Loeb Library, and Columbia University’s Butler Library. She is the author of Maintenance Architecture (MIT Press, 2016) and has taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Yale School of Architecture, and University of Toronto.
IDC Foundation Endowed Chair of Digital Technologies at the New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Design
Alessandro Melis is the inaugural IDC Foundation Endowed Chair and a professor in the School of Architecture and Design. In 2021, he was the curator of the Italian Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia.
Previously, he was professor of architecture innovation and director of the International Cluster for Sustainable Cities at the University of Portsmouth and director of Postgraduate Engagement at the University of Auckland. The relevance of his contribution to research is evidenced by 200+ publications, equally as many citations in popular publications, and conference presentations at the University of Cambridge, Museum of Modern Art, China Academy of Art, and TEDx.
IDC Foundation Chair in Design & Construction at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering
Michael Horodniceanu is inaugural IDC Foundation Chair in Design & Construction and a professor at NYU Tandon. As Chair, he oversees the IDC Innovation Hub, an initiative aimed at actively engaging stakeholders across the construction industry in formulating new approaches to the challenges facing the New York metropolitan area and the wider world.
Previously, he was president of MTA Capital Construction from 2008 to 2017, where he was responsible for the nation’s largest public transportation construction program with over $25 billion in construction. Prior to that, he was Chair and CEO of the Urbitran Group, a multi-disciplinary transportation, planning, engineering, and construction management firm with offices throughout the United States.