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IIDA Educator of the Year

Awards

The IIDA Educator of the Year award recognizes and celebrates a full-time design educator for outstanding accomplishments and commitment to interior design education.

Award Winners

  • Red-haired woman wearing tortoise glasses and red lipstick, blue collared shirt, drop earring, hair in a low ponytail, green foliage.

    Lisa Sundahl Platt, IIDA

    2026 Educator of the Year
    • Lisa Sundahl Platt, Ph.D., M.S., is an Assistant Professor of Interior Design and Research Faculty with the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER) at the University of Florida, where she leads the Design Dynamics Lab and advances human-centered, resilience-focused design education and research. With more than 25 years of experience as a licensed interior designer and consultant, she develops data-informed tools that support safer, more sustainable decision-making. She created the Sustainable Adaptive Material Performance Level (SAMPL) framework, an AI-enhanced platform that helps students and practitioners evaluate material performance, resilience, and end-of-life pathways. She is an NCIDQ-certified, multi-state licensed interior designer and member of IIDA, ASID, and EDRA; an NCIDQ Ambassador; and a TEDxUF speaker on resilient design.
  • A smiling man with glasses and a beard wears a black t-shirt, standing in a bright, modern indoor space. The background is softly blurred.

    Igor Siddiqui, IIDA

    2022 Educator of the Year
    • Igor Siddiqui, IIDA, ASID, is the associate professor and director of the interior design program at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has served as a full-time School of Architecture faculty member since 2009. Siddiqui’s academic work—including teaching, research, and creative scholarship—contributes to the field of interiors as a body of theoretical and applied knowledge with a critical role in contemporary culture. His work has been published, exhibited, and presented internationally at a range of professional, cultural, and popular venues. He studied architecture at Yale and Tulane and is a registered architect in New York and Texas.
  • A man with a beard and bow tie smiles slightly, standing beside a white wall that displays a schedule or agenda in the background.

    Olivier Vallerand, Assoc. IIDA

    2021 Educator of the Year
    • Olivier holds a Ph.D. in architecture from McGill University and currently works as an assistant professor at the Arizona State University. He has held academic positions at the School of Architecture and the Department of Art History in Université Laval, Québec, QC, and Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. While he currently keeps an installation-based practice, Olivier has practiced as a professional architect in various firms across the US and Canada including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Quebec. His research focuses on self-identifications, community identifications, and their relation to the design and experience of the built environment, on queer and feminist approaches to design education, and on alternative practices of design.
  • A woman with short gray hair and earrings smiles confidently. She wears a dark blazer, against a softly blurred background.

    Katherine Ankerson, FIIDA, AIA, FIDEC

    2020 Educator of the Year
    • Prior to her appointment to Dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Katherine Ankerson was professor and head of the Department of Interior Architecture and Product Design at Kansas State University and had served as professor and associate dean in the UNL architecture college. She has held academic positions at Radford University and Washington State University after spending many years as a practicing architect and designer. Ankerson received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture from Washington State, in addition to a master’s degree in architecture. A strong proponent of design education, Ankerson advocates for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary engagement, the value of design and making, and embracing new technologies in addition to strengthening traditional design tools.

Important Dates

  • Applications Open

  • Applications Close

Contact

For more information, contact Cody Czmyr, Director of Member Services, at cczmyr@iida.org.

Eligibility

Current IIDA members in good standing who are current full-time educators with a minimum of five (5) years of experience in a post-secondary program of interior design education at any university or recognized school of interior design. Current International Board Members are not eligible.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to be available to travel at no cost to them, to accept the award at the IIDA Annual Meeting and Chicago Design Week in June 2026.


Apply here

Winners

The IIDA Educator of the Year will receive:

  • A $7,500 cash award and a complimentary IIDA membership
  • Complimentary IIDA membership
  • Award presentation during the 2026 IIDA Annual Meeting
  • Round-trip airfare and a one-night hotel stay in Chicago to attend the award presentation during the IIDA Annual Meeting
  • A feature on IIDA.org, Design Matters, the flagship e-newsletter of IIDA, and QUAD, the quarterly IIDA Student member e-newsletter
  • Official digital assets including logos for self-promotion
  • Coverage and mention in IIDA social media accounts, and in an official press release distributed to leading industry outlets and media partners