Bio: Tiffany Cheng is a Taiwanese American designer, builder, and Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s Department of Design Tech. Her work examines the performance potential of natural and biobased materials for smarter and more sustainable forms of making.
Cheng’s doctoral research focused on developing 4D-printing processes to program biobased materials with bioinspired behaviors for application domains ranging from self-adjusting wearables and self-forming structures to self-regulating facades. As Research Group Leader at the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD), Cheng led the Material Programming research group to investigate integrative computational fabrication methods for creating adaptive furniture and building systems. Cheng has also practiced with Studio Fernando Vazquez, designing socially oriented projects ranging in scope and scale from bike facilities to neighborhood recreation centers across the United States and Japan, and worked with the MaP+S Group at Harvard GSD, researching material-driven manufacturing strategies for bespoke carbon-fiber building components.
Cheng defended her Doctorate in Engineering at the University of Stuttgart in 2024. Prior, she earned her Master’s in design studies (technology) from Harvard University and her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California.