Andressa Martinez is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Maryland. Before joining UMD, she was an assistant professor and the Director of the Digital Fabrication Lab at Judson University in Illinois and the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in Urbanism (PROURB-FAU /UFRJ – The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), a Master's in Urbanism from PROURB-FAU /UFRJ, and a bachelor's degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Her research interests are focused on Architecture, with a particular approach to advanced architectural technologies such as algorithmic and parametric design and digital fabrication. She is interested in single- and multi-family residential projects, how the computational approach allows variation and diversity, and a grammar-based design system for generating several housing units according to family profiles. She also coordinated a project to implement and operate robotic systems in Architecture in Brazil for large-scale 3D printing of building components.
She is an active member of SiGraDi, the International Conference of the Ibero-American Society of Digital Graphics, member of the International Scientific Committee eCAADe (Conference on Education and Research in Computer-Aided Architectural Design in Europe), and the CAAD Futures Conferences.
She had several experiences that completed her training abroad: as a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech (Georgia Institute of Technology) and joining the Shape Computation Lab, coordinated by Professor Thanos Economou. She was an exchange master's student at the University of Strathclyde,, Scotland, with a grant from the European Union Alpha Project. She was also selected for The Global Studio International Workshop in Vancouver, Canada, sponsored by the University of Sydney and hosted by the University of British Columbia. She also participated in a course at the École de Architecture de Versailles in France in partnership with FAU/UFRJ.