SOM Foundation Announces Jury for the 2025 Research Prize

Gia Biagi was appointed secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation by Governor JB Pritzker on December 10, 2024. Biagi brings to the agency decades of experience in urban planning, transportation, public policy, infrastructure, and operations. Biagi’s career spans both private practice and public service and has established her as a visionary leader in planning, policy, and infrastructure management. From 2019 to 2023, she served as commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Transportation, where she delivered hundreds of innovative transportation projects citywide and created a nation-leading strategic plan focused on equitable, safe, and sustainable mobility, along with transformational neighborhood investments. She has held various other private and public roles across the fields of housing, parks and transportation throughout her career of more than two decades.

As a Partner and Director at Gehl, Julia Day works across design, strategy, and research to demonstrate public space as a platform for equitable, healthy, and joyful outcomes. With twenty years of experience working with city agencies and community leaders, she develops public realm strategies to secure millions of dollars for pilot projects, infrastructure investments, and place-based activations. To tell stories about the power of place and learning from lived experience, she works with global philanthropies to prepare new research on social infrastructure and the impacts of place on social sustainability. Prior to Gehl, Julia was a director of transportation and health at the NYC-based advocacy organization Transportation Alternatives. Findings from her research on NYC “Play Streets” led the program to be adopted in PlaNYC and first lady Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthier America. Day’s experience in voter organizing and mobility advocacy informs her focus on engaging audiences that traditionally felt disconnected from governing bodies and impacting policy and design change centered on people and lived experience. She recently joined the faculty at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) to teach Design for Cities in the Interaction Design master’s program.

Iker Gil (Chair) has been the executive director of the SOM Foundation since 2019. He is the founding partner of MAS Studio and founder of the nonprofit MAS Context. Gil has edited or coedited several books, including Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio and Shanghai Transforming. He has curated multiple exhibitions, including Nocturnal Landscapes, Poured Architecture: Sergio Prego on Miguel Fisac, and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago, part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. He was cocurator of Exhibit Columbus 2020–2021 and associate curator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. He was the 2024 Victor A. Morgenstern Family Visiting Chair in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) along with architect Michel Rojkind. He has also previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and the Escola da Cidade (São Paulo). Gil has been selected as one of “Fifty Under Fifty: Innovators of the 21st Century” by a jury composed by Stanley Tigerman, Jeanne Gang, Qingyun Ma, and Marion Weiss, named New Progressive by Architect Magazine, and included in the Hall of Fame in Newcity’s annual Design 50.

Kit Krankel McCullough is an urban designer and Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Through her urban design practice and teaching she advocates for more effective modes of urban practice toward equitable and socially just development, healthy and sustainable environments, and strong communities. At the University of Michigan McCullough teaches design studios on housing and neighborhood development, seminars on transportation and urban economics, and courses on the intersection of design, planning, and real estate development. She has developed urban design and economic strategies at a range of scales, from individual properties to entire regions; and for a range of clients, including cities, institutions, developers, and neighborhood groups. She has led urban design projects in cities around the country, from Flint, Michigan, to La Grange, Georgia, from Pittsburgh to Oklahoma City, from Washington DC to her hometown of Austin, Texas. Prior to joining the faculty at Michigan, McCullough led an urban design studio at Urban Design Associates. In her previous experience, she practiced urban design with Black + Vernooy and with Duany Plater-Zyberk. McCullough received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin and her Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University. She is the recipient of the 1985 SOM Foundation Bachelor of Architecture award.

Jeffrey Sriver joined the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) in 2009 and is currently its Director of Transportation Planning. His team at CDOT is responsible for short-, medium-, and long-range planning, analysis, and research activities encompassing all transportation modes, facilities, users, systems, and networks serving the city. Sriver also leads CDOT’s participation in the CREATE Program, a $5.8 billion region-wide freight and passenger railroad infrastructure improvement plan, as well as CDOT’s involvement in Union Station planning and redevelopment. In addition, he oversees planning for CDOT and IDOT’s multi-year re-envisioning of the city’s iconic North Lake Shore Drive corridor through Lincoln Park. Prior to joining CDOT, Sriver led Strategic Planning activities for the Chicago Transit Authority. He has also been a consultant on urban transportation initiatives in the US and internationally. Sriver has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University and a Masters in Transportation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.