User:Sborghini

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Profile part of the PLAST in CAPS project http://wiki.freeknowledge.eu/index.php/PLAST_project

Sayfan G. Borghini received a Master Degree in Physics and earned a PhD at the University La Sapienza of Rome, Italy. Since 2000 she resides in Israel where she operates as a lecturer, researcher and a consultant. Since 2011 she is lecturing at the Holon Institute of Technology, where she created a number of new courses centering on the implications of the study of complex systems upon multiple areas of design and of urban interventions. She is currently founding a Laboratory in BioDesign at the Masters Course in Integrated Design, where she mentors students' final projects.

Her research focuses on the implications and applications of current understandings in the study of biophysical complex systems upon Design strategies, methodologies and monitoring of outcomes, with a focus on the articulation of biomimetic principles. Specifically in the study of stigmergic principles for the design of collaborative environments, and for the development of urban design interventions aimed at fostering a socially functional urban texture. Since 2013 she has been invited by ISIA Design Roma to sit on the board of an international Design project that involves students and faculty members from multiple academies to re-envision cities http://www.transition-town.it/transition-town.

As part of her academic research, Dr Borghini took part in the curation of a number of Exhibitions on the intersection of emerging technologies with social and ecological realities and the respective conflicts, among them “the Cartography of the Unseen”, Research Gallery HIT [1]; “IL(L) Machine”, Ars Electronica (http://arscampusil.com); “BioDesign” Research Gallery HIT [2].

Along her career she has been actively involved in communal realities and has intensively collaborated with social entrepreneurs. Between 2009 and 2011 she has operated as the Coordinator of the Polytopia Project, an extensive community on the web that discusses social implications of digital environments and viable models for pluralistic approaches and she had the opportunity to present the project in multiple venues http://spacecollective.org/projects/Polytopia / link [3].

Her interest in the development of cross-disciplinary perspectives, brought her to take part on few projects centered around education. In the last three years she is part of the EU Tempus Idea Project [4], born of the collaboration of 10 European and Israeli academies with Industry, where she leads the interdisciplinary didactic activity at HIT and, in collaboration, at the University of Brighton, and where she currently takes part in the development of the Academic Innovation Hub funded by the project. Furthermore, in 2014 she was invited by the Mofet Institute and by the Sustainable Global Leadership Academy, to participate in the year long Israeli panel “Education in an Evolving World: Future Intelligence”, centered on public engagement in the future of education.


Recent publications include:

2014, Levin, Borghini, Geiger & Markfeld, “Employing Data Visualization to Explore Human Stigmergy in Information Systems”, conference paper for ECIS – the 22nd European Conference on Information Systems. Retrieved October 12, 2014.

2015, Borghini, S.G., “The Transforming Identity of Cities”, proceedings of the conference ‘Hypothesis for an Urban Design of Inclusion’; ISIA Design, Pordenone. To be published.


For a more extended CV [5]