Botond Bognár is a PhD student at the College of Environmental Design (CED) at the University of California, Berkeley, working with the XR Lab founded and led by Professor Luisa Caldas. His research focuses on affordances of non-tangible volumetric interfaces within extended reality environments. He holds an MA in Political Science from Central European University and an MS/BS in Social Policy from Eötvös Lóránd Science University, Budapest, Hungary.
After leading teams of architects and interior designers such as Tadao Ando, Ron Arad, and Ilse Crawford to create buildings in Central Europe, he co-founded two startups in Silicon Valley, REscan and Pillantas, in collaboration with Stanford Research Institute and NASA scientists, respectively. His work entails the research, design and development, and digitization of built environments with spatial scanners, 3D digital reconstruction solutions, and novel human computer interfaces within spatial computing. For his innovations, Bognár has received seven issued patents. Most recently, under his design lead, REscan’s Spatial Communication System nabbed three Red Dot Design Awards winning the Mobile UX and Mobile UI categories and a Best of the Best distinction.