PhD student in Building Science, Technology, and Sustainability
Tao Sun is a PhD student in Building Science, Technology, and Sustainability at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. His research focuses on applied machine learning for the built environment, connecting computational design, building performance, and digital or robotic fabrication. He has developed AI-assisted workflows for structural form-finding, including equilibrium-based models and reuse-aware design, vision-based 3D reconstruction using synthetic datasets, and agentic pipelines that translate engineering outputs into clear, decision-ready visuals.
Tao earned his M.A. (Architecture, 2024) and B.A. (Architecture, 2021) from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) with additional studies in software engineering at the University of Queensland. He has worked across both practice and research, including applied R&D at Drees & Sommer, with the Specialist Modelling Group at Foster + Partners, and with BMW. He has also taught computational design and digital fabrication at TUM. Beyond academia, he serves on the Bavarian Chamber of Architects’ Strategy Group for Digitalization, advancing digital transformation in the built environment, and co-manages social media for the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures.