Botond Bognár

Botond Bognár is a PhD candidate in interdisciplinary studies at UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. He is working with the XR Lab led by Professor Luisa Caldas on his research spanning spatial design, information science, and human-computer interaction within the framework of human-technology relations. His inquiry focuses on exosomatic spatial memory systems and argues that photographs, documents, and files we store in the cloud function as an exteriorized memory. Through his research he asks whether embodied interaction within extended reality environments can restore the spatial cues that flat, screen-based interfaces have stripped from how we organize and retrieve information.

Before Berkeley, Bognár spent two decades developing mixed-use city centers and cultural projects in Central Europe, leading projects with architects and designers including Tadao Ando, Ron Arad, Ilse Crawford, BOARD Studio, and Kerényi Studio. In Silicon Valley he co-founded two spatial computing startups: REscan, which scans and streams 3D models of large indoor spaces, in collaboration with SRI International; and Pillantas, which develops eye-movement-based 3D interfaces with former NASA Ames vision scientists. He invented REscan's head-mounted scanner and single-touch mobile viewer and Pillantas's eye-vergence interaction technique, holds seven U.S. patents, and led the design of REscan's Spatial Communication System, which received three Red Dot Design Awards, including a Best of the Best distinction. He mentors with the XR Guild's Silicon Valley chapter.