Current Executive Board Members

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Paul Pangaro first encountered cybernetics glancingly via Jerry Lettvin and then deeply via Gordon Pask, whom he met in 1976 in the office of Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Architecture Machine Group. Pangaro was awarded a B.S. in Humanities/Computer Science in 1974 and a PhD. from Brunel University (UK) under Pask in 1986. He collaborated with Pask for over a decade under contract to the US and UK governments. Pangaro is committed to pairing every generation of practitioners interested in solving global wicked problems with the knowledge and practice of cyberneticians world-wide. With Kate Doyle Pangaro is co-leading #NewMacyMeetings, a renewal of the original Macy Meetings from 1940s and 50s that became the foundation of trans-disciplinary cybernetics, now with 21st-century trans-global and trans-generational constituents. In 2018 Pangaro with TJ McLeish as master fabricator created a full-scale replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles, displayed at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2020, which Pangaro has donated to the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany. Pangaro has been studying conversation and design, both human-human and human-machine, for over forty years. His design practice, lectures, and writing have centered on designing for conversation and seeing design as conversation. His career spans roles as interaction designer, entrepreneur, researcher, performer, and professor. In January 2019 Pangaro became Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, changing roles mid-2022 to Visiting Scholar in School of Architecture and School of Design at CMU. Pangaro recently formed the non-profit Cybernetic Media to help preserve and extend the rich legacy of cybernetics.

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Tom Scholte is a Professor of Acting and Directing for both stage and screen at the University of British Columbia. As a writer, actor, producer, his work has been seen at such venues as the Toronto, Berlin, and Sundance Film Festivals. He is the Faculty Lead of Conflict Theatre@UBC; a joint initiative of his home department, UBC Human Resources, and UBC Office of Equity and Inclusion. The team uses methods of interactive theater to explore workplace conflict. His research on the cybernetics of acting and Forum Theatre as a modeling facility for complex social contexts can be found in such journals as Kybernetes, Constructivist Foundations, and Futures.

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Pille Bunnell is a systems ecologist and second-order cybernetician with a passion for education as her contribution to the sustainability of earth. In particular, she is interested in the implications of acting according to a constitutive ontology and epistemology. She has worked as an international environmental consultant and taught systems courses at several universities. Pille is the recipient of the Norbert Wiener Award for contributions to second-order cybernetics (ASC), and the Kelly Award for outstanding teaching (RRU).

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Laura Ehmann first knew cybernetic play when studying with Dr. Bradford Keeney, author of Aesthetics of Change, Dr. Alfonso Montuori, and fellow student Dr. Jocelyn Chapman who are all cyberneticians extraordinaire and all affiliated with the California Institute of Integral Studies. Keeney and Montuori encouraged students to practice cybernetics always in all ways i.e., a cybernetics of the everyday. Jocelyn and Laura took it to heart and continue to spiral into the heart of cybernetics: deconstructing and reconstructing their everyday realities, recursively subjecting their ways-of-knowing to their ways of knowing, and increasing laughter at and with each other through second-order mischief-ing.

Laura Ehmann holds an MA in Transformative Studies and an MA in Business Communication.

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I was raised in southern New Jersey and later Annapolis, Maryland, and earned a BA from in Mathematics from Colgate 1981, and a Masters in Sustainable Landscape Design and Planning at the Conway School (Conway, MA) in 1995. I’ve lived in New York’s Hudson Valley since 1996, when I began working at Dutchess Land Conservancy, a private non-profit conservation land trust in Millbrook, NY. Most of my work centers on the use of  Geographic Information Systems linking digital maps with databases. I live in the small Town of Red Hook, home of Bard College, and my non-work interests include bicycling and conducting ongoing research regarding Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form and  mathematical logic more generally.

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Adler’s quest is to enable more meaningful interactions between humans through technology design and collaborative processes. Adler has worked in Europe and Asia as a design researcher, interaction designer, design thinking coach and product manager. His encounter with cybernetics began with Stafford Beer’s book, “Designing Freedom” where Beer provided a new lens for viewing human-technology interaction, which keeps inspiring me on how I develop products as viable systems.

With a background in computer science and design strategy, Adler is currently a product manager for web applications.

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Jocelyn Chapman, PhD, is a transdisciplinarian with a special interest in cybernetics and systems thinking. She is Director of the Transformative Inquiry Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, California. She also teaches in the online Transformative Leadership MA and Transformative Studies PhD programs at CIIS.

Editor of the book “For the Love of Cybernetics: Personal Narratives by Cyberneticians“, 2020

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Christiane M. Herr is an architectural researcher and educator focusing on the areas of structural design, innovative structural design education, digitally supported design, conceptual design, design studio teaching and traditional Chinese approaches to creative thinking. Christiane currently is an Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University’s Department of Architecture. In her PhD work at The University of Hong Kong, Christiane explored cellular automata as a means to establish architectural design support, which led to her strong interest in diagrams and designerly ways of seeing. In her recent research, Christiane has focused primarily on innovative approaches to structural design education in architecture. Her research focus in structural design emphasizes structural design pedagogy as well as research into qualitative aspects of structural design processes. Christiane’s approach to education for creativity relies strongly on second-order cybernetics and radical constructivism. In her research work, Christiane focuses on the integration of designerly and scientific modes of inquiry through empirical, grounded, and action research approaches. Christiane is a member of conference organizing and review committees for the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) and the Association for Computer-Aided Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) and executive board member in both societies. In addition, she is a member of peer review committees of various journals and conferences.

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Thomas Fischer is the Director of the Design Research Institute at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China, where he works as an Associate Professor, teaching Architecture as well as Industrial Design. Thomas is a Fellow of the Design Research Society and received the American Society for Cybernetics’ Warren McCulloch Award in 2011. Thomas holds a PhD in Education from the University of Kassel in Germany and one in Architecture and Design from RMIT University in Australia. Thomas previously researched and taught at the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as an Assistant Professor and as the Discipline Leader of Product and Industrial Design. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the College of Planning and Design at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan from early 2010 to mid-2011. Thomas’ research is focused on computer-aided architectural design, on cybernetics as well as on design education in China and in Sino-foreign contexts.

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Mateus van Stralen is a practicing architect and lecturer at the Architecture School of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he has been a faculty member since 2015. There he heads the Projects Department, is a researcher at Lagear (Graphics Laboratory for Architectural Experience), and at NEXT (Experimentation Center in Digital Technologies), where he investigates the use of digital technologies for training, learning, and design. In his PhD, under the supervision of José Cabral dos Santos Filho, Mateus explored possible ways of designing dynamic architectural systems involving both users and their environment in a mutual, continuous, and circular design process. In his work, the circularity between acting and understanding is structured from a cybernetic perspective, which forms the basis for the general conceptual framework to explore and understand the systemic nature of architecture. Mateus’ research interest addresses design education, architecture, computational design, and Second-Order Cybernetics, intertwining theory and practice.

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Ben Sweeting is a Principal Lecturer in architecture and design at the University of Brighton, UK. He studied at the University of Cambridge and The Bartlett, UCL, completing his PhD at the latter in 2014 under the supervision of Neil Spiller and Ranulph Glanville. He has received the Heinz von Foerster award from the ASC and is a member of the UK Cybernetics Society and the Systemic Design Association. Ben’s research addresses the intersection of design, cybernetics and ethics through historical, theoretical and creative projects.

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Claudia Westermann, PhD., is an artist and architect, licensed with the German Chamber of Architects, and Senior Associate Professor in architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China. She holds postgraduate degrees in architecture and media art and obtained a PhD. from CAiiA, Planetary Collegium. Her research is informed by second-order cybernetics, actualising in interdisciplinary projects concerned with the ecologies, poetics and philosophies of art and architectural design. Her works have been widely exhibited and presented, including at the Venice Biennale (architecture), the Moscow International Film Festival, ISEA Symposium for the Electronic Arts, the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Yanping Art Harvest in Fujian, China. Claudia Westermann is a member of the Editorial Organism of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research. Her website is https://www.litra-design.com.

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Allenna first encountered cybernetics as a doctoral student in a class taught by Barry Clemson who was president of ASC at the time and who invited cybernetic pioneers to his Socratic seminars – the entry ticket for students was reading one of their books and/or major articles. She earned a BA from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, a MA from George Washington University and a PhD. from the University of Maryland in College Park.Soon after becoming active in ASC she met and began collaborating with Stafford Beer and continued to work with him in Toronto until his death in 2002. Their work together included assignments in Uruguay, Venezuela, England and Canada. She has served as president of the American Society for Cybernetics and the International Society for Systems Science and is currently chair of the Canadian environmental group, Ecologos and is a founding member of Metaphorum, the organization working to maintain and extend Stafford’s work, especially the Viable System Model and Team Syntegrity process, Allenna has been interested in the assessment of soft information, sustainability, and the practice of politics. Metaphorum.org.