2023 Graduate Group Member Materials Science & Engineering
2023 Johnson&Johnson Woman in STEM2D Scholar
2022 Director DumoLab Research Weitzman School of Design
2021 Assistant Professor of Graduate Architecture
2021 Graduate Group Member Architectural Technology
2021 Faculty Fellow at Lauder College House CHAS
Education
Ph.D. IDOC, Tufts University, Biomedical Engineering, The Silklab
S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Lab, Mediated Matter Group
S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Architecture, Design Computation Group
MArch & BArch., Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Escola Tecnica Superior d’Arquitectura
Dr. Laia Mogas-Soldevila is a licensed Architect with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering that has pioneered the “biomaterial architectures” field by bringing bio-fabrication methods and biodegradable materials from life sciences to the field of building construction.
She is an Assistant Professor of Graduate Architecture and Director of DumoLab Research at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania since 2022. Laia's research focuses on radically sustainable material practices across science, engineering, and design. Her pedagogy supports novel theory and applied methods understanding biomaterials and bio-based fabrication in product design and architecture. Over the past ten years while teaching at UPC, MIT, Cornell, and Penn, Laia has built scholarship reconsidering matter as a fundamental design driver and partnering with scientists to redesign it towards unprecedented environmental capabilities.
She specializes in devising architectural bio-composite applications from protein and polysaccharide binders, natural fibers and aggregates, and living systems such as cell-free systems, bacteria, fungi, edible plants, and mosses. Her DumoLab at Penn develops bricks, furniture, partitions, exterior walls, or canopies able to replace unsustainable material families, re-valorize waste, bio-remediate problematic air and soil, or detect, display, and correct chemical changes in human habitats. Her work is developed at room temperature, ambient conditions, and in water. She patented in 2015 and continues to develop the “water-based digital design and fabrication platform”, a multi-meter-scale robotic bio-composite additive manufacturing system based on hydrogel blends. Once cured, her environmentally regenerative constructs behave like cements, particle board, animal leather, or plastic membrane.
Dr Mogas-Soldevila has received the prestigious Johnson&Johnson Foundation Woman in STEM2D Scholar Award as well as grants by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Penn's University Research Foundation (URF), Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, the Penn Environmental Innovations Initiative, Sachs Program for Art Innovation, and the Penn Global Engagement Fund. Her work has been shown at the Milan's and London's Design Weeks in 2023 with industrial partners, NYC and SF MoMA as part of Mediated Matter Group in 2022, the New Lab in Brooklyn for Biofabricate with The Silklab, the ICA Philadelphia for ACADIA 2023, the Athens Opera House during Nostos Festival 2021 with the Tufts SilkLab, and at the Barcelona D-HUB Museum for DesignDoes 2020, and at CCA in 2025 for their Autodesk Technology Center Alliance Pioneering Biomaterials Symposium and Exhibit.
On top of being a licensed architect by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia School of Architecture (UPC-ETSAV) with a minor in fine arts by the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris (ENSBA), she holds an interdisciplinary doctorate bridging biomaterials science, biomedical engineering, and advanced design from Tufts University's School of Engineering (BME) developed at The Silklab, and two master's degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning within the DesComp and MediatedMatter groups (MIT SA+P).
