Melodie Yashar

Melodie Yashar Speaker Biography

Melodie Yashar is the current Director of Building Design & Performance at ICON, a startup developing advanced construction technologies to shift the paradigm of home building on Earth and beyond. She also teaches undergraduate and graduate design studios at Art Center College of Design.

Yashar was previously a Senior Research Associate with San Jose State University Research Foundation at NASA Ames in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (part of the Human Systems Integration Division at Ames), a co-founder of Space Exploration Architecture (SEArch+), an Associate Researcher within the UC Davis Center for Human/Robotics/Vehicle Integration and Performance (HRVIP). Other former positions include being a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute, a researcher within Carnegie Mellon’s Morphing Matter Lab, and the Design Director of Sonic Platforms. I am a 2019-2020 Future Space Leaders Fellow.

As an undergraduate, Melodie studied at UC Berkeley and at Art Center, and holds graduate degrees in architecture and human-computer interaction with an emphasis in robotics from Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon University.

My current work focuses on relationship of advanced software & hardware systems for spaceflight. I believe the future of autonomous construction will leverage human-robot and human-machine collaboration for both Earth and space. Having come from an interdisciplinary background, I appreciate those who see research and design as a confluence of different fields—allowing problem solving to become a more thoroughly collaborative exercise.