Rozhen Mohammed-Amin, an EVDS PhD candidate, was recently presented the Graduate Scholar Award at the prestigious International Conference on the Inclusive Museum in Los Angeles.
Mohammed-Amin is a senior architect at the Ministry of Municipality and Tourism in Kurdistan of Iraq. As a practising architect, she designed and co-designed numerous architectural design projects in Kurdistan including residential, commercial, and recreational buildings. She was also involved in developing and supervising development of master plans in both the State Organization of Tourism and Directorate of Urban Planning and Design in the Ministry of Municipality.
After earning her BSc in architecture at the University of Sulaimani in 2004, Mohammed-Amin finished her master's degree at EVDS in computational media design in 2010 and subsequently started her PhD in EVDS under the supervisions of Profs. Tang Lee and Jeff Boyd.
With lifelong interests in cultural heritage, historic architecture, and technology, she has dedicated her research projects and thesis to explore the confluence of these domains. In her BSc thesis project, Mohammed-Amin designed a memorial museum in which she proposed integrating state-of-the art technologies with the museum exhibits, while in her master's thesis she designed a mobile augmented reality (AR) proof-of concept for the ancient site of Arbil Citadel in Kurdistan. She continued exploring the applications of AR technology in museums, historic architecture, and cultural heritage domains through her PhD research.
Inspired by the ever-growing role of information and communication technologies and digital media in re-shaping architecture in the Digital Age, Mohammed-Amin has been investigating the role of AR technology in enriching people's experience in architectural and urban spaces, in particular museums and historic sites. This involves evaluating the effects of mobile AR technology on the visiting experience in museums and historic architecture. As part of her research, she has designed, developed, and is now evaluating a mobile AR guide for Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary. Mohammed-Amin has presented her research works in several national and international conferences.
Graduate Scholar Awards are given to outstanding graduate students who have an active academic interest in the conference area and are presenting their research at the conference. In addition to presenting her research, as the recipient of the conference award, Mohammed-Amin was invited to chair parallel sessions.