Alumna Mariana Popescu: Designing Across Disciplines

Progress in the built environment isn’t just about new technologies—it’s about how people with different expertise come together to apply them.

NCCR DFAB Alumna Mariana Popescu was a postdoctoral researcher at the NCCR Digital Fabrication in the Block Research Group, where she also obtained her PhD in 2019. After that, she became Assistant Professor of Digital Fabrication at TU Delft in the Netherlands. She is now an incoming professor at MIT in Boston, USA.

In this portrait series, she talks about the importance of communicating across disciplines—learning to understand engineers, material scientists, computer scientists, and others to make complex projects work. Mariana has been at the forefront of integrating computational design with fabrication processes, pioneering the use of knitted textiles as stay-in-place formwork for concrete structures.

Curious to hear more about her journey and her take on collaboration? Watch the alumna interview with Prof. Dr. Mariana Popescu below.

Former researchers of the NCCR Digital Fabrication hold key positions in science and industry worldwide. They lead research centers and institutes at universities, are represented in national academies, and play influential advisory roles in industry. As pioneers in digital fabrication, they shape the global discourse and drive innovation in their fields. Through our alumni video portraits, we showcase their journeys and explore how their experiences at NCCR DFAB continue to influence their work today.