Gigi Polo
Gigi Polo (Niberca Lluberes) is a Dominican-born designer, educator, filmmaker, and practice-based PhD candidate in Design Research at RMIT University. Her research project, Osmotic Sensoria, explores how multisensory environments, embodied cognition, and emerging technologies—including AR, VR, MR, and EEG—can foster more neuroinclusive and equitable learning experiences. Grounded in speculative design, sensory design, and design futures methodologies, her work investigates how space, perception, and the body shape learning and knowledge production.
A graduate of Chavón School of Design (Class of 2003), Gigi received the Ruth Vanderpool Scholarship to attend Parsons School of Design, where she earned her BFA in 2005. She has taught at Parsons since 2006 and currently serves as a Part-Time Associate Teaching Professor. Her teaching integrates design theory, social justice, neurodiversity, mental health, and language justice across studio, systems thinking, and DEI-centered curricula. She has also taught at Montclair State University, City University of New York, LIM College, and internationally at Chavón and the Museum of Modern Art (MAM).
Gigi is the author of Second Language Through Design[ing] (2017), a pedagogical framework supporting multilingual learners in design education, and the creator of the Sprint-to-Pacing model for intensive learning. Her scholarship has been presented internationally through platforms including CGScholar, Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design Studies, SPARK Journal, ICDPCA, APA, MozFest, and numerous Design Principles and Practices conferences in Singapore, Madrid, Rome, and Australia. She currently serves on the CGScholar Editorial Board. She also serves as Vice President of Communications and Branding for FATE.
As founder of Gigi Polo Lab, a design futures and research practice, she collaborates with mission-driven organizations to reimagine systems, environments, and experiences that advance sustainability, wellbeing, equity, and neuroinclusion. From 2021 to 2023, she served as Design Director at Dauphin Americas, leading initiatives in sustainability, workplace wellbeing, brand transformation, and experiential design.
Her contributions have been recognized through multiple international awards, including the Emergent Scholar Award from the Design Principles and Practices Research Network. As a filmmaker, she directed Madly Gifted, a documentary examining bipolar disorder and creativity that was later integrated into the psychiatry curriculum at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Across her work, Gigi brings together design, education, futures thinking, and cognitive science to expand how people learn, perceive, and create in an increasingly complex world.