Dr. Thelma Lazo-Flores (Dean Of Interior Design)

Dr. Thelma Lazo-Flores has been in the creative industry and higher education for over thirty years. She has been a design educator in both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels of interior architecture, landscape architecture, furniture design, product and interface design, visual communications, industrial design, and studio art programs in the US, Singapore, Japan, and the Philippines. Prior to joining the academia, she professionally practiced for over ten years covering luxury residential design, commercial offices, hospitality spaces, trade shows, and military buildings in various parts of the world. She received her Ph.D. in Design Science and Planning from Chiba University, Japan with a scholarship grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education. Her broad spectrum of research includes refereed international presentations and published book chapters and encyclopedia entries in the US, UK, Finland, Italy, India, and Japan. Further, her peer-reviewed journal articles cover the areas of design for sustainability, pedagogical structures, spatial design studies, applied theory and practice, and socio-cultural issues affecting design. She is currently the Dean of Interior Design at Istituto Marangoni Miami.