about

Short Bio

Dr. Fernando Lima is an architect and urban designer with over 17 years of teaching experience in higher education across the United States, Brazil, and Portugal, bringing a global perspective that merges design innovation with social awareness. Since 2022, he has served as an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Director of Digital Fabrication at the O'More College of Architecture and Design, Belmont University. From 2020 to 2022, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing at Pennsylvania State University, where he further honed his expertise in computational design and digital fabrication.

Dr. Lima's teaching approach blends computational design and service-learning initiatives, fostering innovation, creativity, and character through interdisciplinary collaboration. By integrating academic instruction with meaningful community engagement, he aims to empower students to apply their knowledge in real-world contexts, enriching their learning experience while cultivating civic responsibility and social impact.

His research spans generative design, optimization, data science, and digital fabrication, with a strong focus on sustainable cities, and advanced computational methods in design education. Dr. Lima holds a Ph.D. in Urbanism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which included a one-year doctoral exchange at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon, Portugal. His doctoral thesis received an Honorable Mention in the 2018 Fulbright | CAPES Foundation National Thesis Awards.

Dr. Lima has held key leadership roles in academia, including vice-director of the College of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. As a tenured professor and research leader, he has advanced curriculum innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, heading the Architecture and Urbanism Research Laboratory (DOMVS / UFJF-CNPq). His international influence includes serving on the Executive Committee of the Ibero-American Society of Digital Graphics (SIGraDi) and collaborating with research groups at the University of Lisbon. He also contributes to the field as a reviewer for leading journals in architecture and urban design.