Simona Maschi is a co-founder and director of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Leading the overall organisation at CIID she heads a team that encompasses a world class consultancy, education programme and a research lab.

Simona is an expert in service design, scenario design and design methods and is passionate about design solutions that create a positive impact on the world. She supports this vision through creating a design culture that works in collaboration with academia and industry. Recent projects have explored topics such as private and public transportation, health and wellbeing, sustainable housing, and smart cities.

Widely respected in industry, Simona regularly speaks at conferences and events, bringing inspiration on how people centred design can create new and reinforce existing innovation paths. She is a member of the jury for the IXDA Interaction Awards 2014 and part of a board of experts implementing new design strategies at the University of Macau in China.

Simona has over 15 years teaching experience at various institutions including Denmark’s Design School (DKDS) and the IT University in Copenhagen. She has lectured at the Politecnico University in Milan, and was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Until June 2006, she was an associate professor and researcher at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy.

Simona studied at the Polytechnic University of Milan where where she completed both her PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication (2002), and her MA in Architecture (1996).