Tiffany Cheng

Tiffany Cheng is a Taiwanese American designer, builder, and incoming Assistant Professor at Cornell University's Department of Design Tech, whose 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 in Design Studies (Technology) from Harvard University and her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California.

Related News

• AAP Welcomes New Faculty and Endowed Fellows This Fall

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Horizon Europe — EIC Pathfinder Challenge: "ARCHIBIOFOAM: Digital Design and Robotic Fabrication of Biofoams for Adaptive Mono-Material Architecture" (2024–2027)
• Materialpreis: ❤ Award (2023)
• Future of Construction: Best Poster Award (2022)

• Living Machines: Best Paper Award (2020)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations, London Design Biennale in the United Kingdom (2023)
• Future and the Arts: How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow, Mori Art Museum in Japan (2019–2020)

• The 130th Anniversary Exhibition, Eiffel Tower in Paris, France (2019)

Publications (Selected)

• T. Cheng, M. Thielen, S. Poppinga, Y. Tahouni, D. Wood, T. Steinberg, A. Menges, T. Speck: 2021, "Bio-Inspired Motion Mechanisms: Computational Design and Material Programming of Self-Adjusting 4D-Printed Wearable Systems". Advanced Science, vol. 8, no. 13. (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202100411)
• T. Cheng, D. Wood, L. Kiesewetter, E. Özdemir, K. Antorveza, A. Menges: 2021, "Programming Material Compliance and Actuation: Hybrid Additive Fabrication of Biocomposite Structures for Large-Scale Self-Shaping". Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, vol. 16, no. 5. (DOI: 10.1088/1748-3190/ac10af)
• T. Cheng, Y. Tahouni, D. Wood, B. Stolz, R. Mülhaupt, A. Menges: 2020, "Multifunctional Mesostructures: Design and Material Programming for 4D-Printing". Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF '20). (DOI: 10.1145/3424630.3425418)