Mariana Popescu is a computational architect and structural designer with a strong interest and experience in innovative ways of approaching the fabrication process and use of materials in construction. She is Class of 1942 Development Chair Assistant Professor at MIT in the Department of Architecture and the Schwarzman College of Computing. Her area of expertise is computational and parametric design with a focus on digital fabrication and sustainable design. Her extensive involvement in projects related to promoting sustainability has led to a multilateral development of skills, which combine the fields of architecture, engineering, computational design and digital fabrication.She obtained her Phd in 2019 from ETH Zurich with a research focus on the development of KnitCrete, a novel, material-saving, labour-reducing, cost-effective formwork system for casting doubly-curved geometries in concrete using 3D knitting. She is the main author of the award-winning KnitCandela shell and was named a “Pioneer” in the MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 list of 2019. She has developed a number of high profile projects including KnitNervi at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, the Common Thread pavilion at the Trienale in Brugges and Necto at the Arsenale within the 25th Venice Architectural Biennale. Recently she obtained a European Inovation Council Pathfinder grant to further develop fabrication aware design methods for knitted fabric formworks.