Rognoli Valentina

Valentina Rognoli is a designer, researcher, and internationally recognised scholar in Materials Design, and Associate Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, where she founded and leads the Biodesign Lab and the Materials Design for Transition research group.

After graduating in Strategic Product Design at the Politecnico di Milano, she worked with the Italian designer Enzo Mari, an experience that profoundly shaped her critical design approach. In 2000, she conceived and established the Material Library (Materioteca) at the Politecnico di Milano, which continues to serve as a key resource for design education and research. During her PhD (2000–2004), she conducted pioneering research on the expressive, experiential, and sensory dimensions of materials, anticipating themes that later became central to contemporary materials research. Over the past twenty-five years, she has played a leading role in establishing Materials Design as a distinct field of design research and in advancing its evolution towards Biodesign and Regenerative Design. Her work investigates how designers can collaborate with living systems, emerging biomaterials and biofabricated materials, and material ecologies to support ecological transition and foster regenerative futures. She is among the scholars who have significantly contributed to the development of Materials Driven Design (MDD), an approach in which materials become the driving force of the design process, guiding innovation through experimentation, tinkering, sensory experience, and storytelling.

Today, her work integrates biological processes, DIY materials, craft knowledge, and regenerative thinking to explore how biological, technological, cultural, and craft-based forms of intelligence can converge to create regenerative material systems and new relationships between humans, materials, and the more-than-human world. Her work combines experimental practice, scientific investigation, and interdisciplinary collaboration with international research networks. She has coordinated several European research projects on DIY materials, craft-based innovation and biodesign education.

Alongside her research, Dr Rognoli has contributed to doctoral education and academic leadership. She has supervised seven PhD graduates, several of whom now hold academic positions at leading design schools worldwide, and currently mentors a new generation of ten doctoral researchers at the Politecnico di Milano and partner universities worldwide. She is regularly invited to serve as an external examiner by leading European design schools and contributes to the international design research community through scientific committees, editorial boards, research evaluation panels and, since 2026, as a member of the International Advisory Council (IAC) of the Design Research Society (DRS). Her teaching spans Materials Design, Biodesign, Design for Sustainability, Materials Experience, and Regenerative Design, with a strong emphasis on experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and research through design. Dr Rognoli is also the director of the specialising master in Design for Sustainability & Regeneration at POLI.Design and a faculty member at the Joint School of Design of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU), China. She has built an extensive publication record spanning books, peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. She is the author and editor of several reference volumes in the fields of Materials Design and Biodesign, including Materials Experience (Elsevier) and Living Interaction Design (Routledge).

Today, her work is a reference in the fields of Materials Design, Biodesign, and Regenerative Design, and continues to influence research agendas, design education, and professional practice across the global design community.In 2025, she was co-inventor of the Italian patent An Artificial Coral Reef System with a Modular Interlocking Structure (Italian patent application No. 102025000030112), developed within the XREEF project, contributing to the application of design research to marine ecosystem regeneration, also awarded by Red Dot.