Interview: Cornelia Freund, Photos: Qing Wan (Oriana)
ED: What made you decide to study architecture at TUM for your Bachelor's and Master's degrees?
Jessica Bielski: For my Abitur, I chose an advanced course in mathematics and a colloquium in art – I was interested in that. I like the combination of art and mathematics and that's how I got into architecture. During my Bachelor's degree, I followed the interesting projects that the Master's students were working on. I wanted to do the same and decided on architectural informatics early on. My Master's thesis dealt with artificial intelligence (AI) for architectural design.
You are also dealing with AI in architectural planning as part of your doctorate. What exactly are you researching for your doctoral thesis?
Jessica Bielski: Only recently have I really reflected that the common thread in my life is that I like to help others do their work themselves and do it better, to be an enabler. My PhD is about supporting architects and planners. They should make faster and better decisions in the early design phases because they are very relevant. What is known as architectural quality also includes important long-term issues such as sustainability and resource efficiency.
Where are you at with your academic work and what challenges do you face?
Jessica Bielski: I am now in my first year, have written the exposé and then enrolled. I'm currently in the phase of making the inherent architectural methodology comprehensible and helping AI to communicate properly with architects. Often a problem with machine learning is that the process is not clear as to why it comes up with this output or that suggestion. I am working on what is known as explainability, i.e. trying to make the output suitable in context and explainable for the person. I am currently working on a framework that will be further developed into an ontology. I have made first attempts with recurrent neural networks. You can use labels to give them time sequences, let them learn and use them to make predictions.
Since October 2023, you have been the elected representative of the doctoral students at the TUM School of Engineering and Design. What university policy issues are you involved in?
Jessica Bielski: The list is long: for example, we organize events and hosted Dr. Alina Gales for International Women's Day with a lecture on "Biases in Society and Science". How do I deal with differences in research results in terms of explanations, cultures and genders? An interesting topic, especially when it comes to responsible AI.
In committee work, I represent us doctoral students in the School Council. One of our goals is to include in the supervision agreement how much of the working time of budget positions is actually used for dissertations.
You work at the TUM School of Management as a research assistant at the Chair of Entrepreneurship. At what point in your life did you come to this topic?
Jessica Bielski: As a Master's student of architecture, I took part in the Think.Make.Start. event and liked the idea of planning something and holding it in my hand afterwards. If things go well, you can create one or more prototypes in one go. I also tried out robotics and automation along the way. The focus of the project was on biomedicine and, curiously, we used starting points from interior design for the realization and somehow everything came together again. We had a lot of fun back then.
I first worked as a student assistant at Think.Make.Start. and then I joined as a design coach. When they were looking for someone for "digital prototyping" and I was making interaction prototypes at the time, I applied to Prof. Holger Patzelt at the Entrepreneurship Research Institute. Now I still give the "Digital Prototyping" course once a year and it is simply fascinating to see how young people design models. I've already seen an old hollowed-out coffee machine and to simulate a touchpad, the students simply put a cell phone in it and ran this interaction prototype on it. Cool.
Do you live interdisciplinarity at TUM?
Jessica Bielski: Yes, it couldn't be better. I already worked with construction robotics and electrical engineering during my Master's in Architecture. In my research field of architectural informatics - which is actually more like data science - there was a collaboration with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, for example. For the Bachelor of Engineering, I am a co-lecturer for the course "Entrepreneurial Idea Development". These are all examples of the interdisciplinary working groups that have brought me exponential growth in my knowledge and personality - very important and enriching.
You received the Angela Molitoris Diversity Award from TUM for your outstanding voluntary work to support severely disabled employees at our university. What challenges do you see in the areas of equal opportunities, inclusion and diversity?
Jessica Bielski: I myself have a chronic illness and an associated severe disability and before the last election I noticed that younger women from the scientific field were underrepresented in the TUM's representative body for severely disabled employees. So I thought to myself: Be the change you want to see. And then I stood for both the election committee and the election and I have been committed to doing more for inclusion ever since. We are a great team, always have an open ear and help where we can. Everyone can do something themselves and be a little more considerate in the world.
Both my mother and my aunt shaped me a lot. My mother was a computer scientist. She gave me an interest in STEM subjects and encouraged me in my career. My aunt had a car accident when I was five and has been paraplegic ever since. She always spoke her mind and also gave speeches at the Pfennigparade Foundation, for example. I still have one of her pictures, which she painted with a brush in her mouth. One of the things I learned from her is that you always reach your goal, no matter how many obstacles there are in the way. It may take longer and you may have to take a small detour, but you can get there. The topic of inclusion was simply normal for me. And that's also what I want to pass on to others.
Links:
Chair of Architectural Informatics
Architecture B. A.
Architecture M. A.
Doctorate at the TUM School of Engineering and Design
Think.Make.Start.
Entrepreneurship Research Institute