Saar Ben Porat
The most interesting things happen when disciplines intersect: I started taking a myriad of courses in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem which eventually gathered up to be a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature with a division in Cognition Studies, and a second bachelor’s degree in Psychology. I graduated both with honors. After that I worked as a research administrator in the Feuerstein Institute, a center for for children with cognitive disabilities in a research endeavor designed to evaluate the long term effects of diagnostic procedures for Autism. Following that, I have worked as a researcher in the research administration of the Israeli Ministry of Economics, designing and validating questionnaires for evaluating labor related psychometric constructs like burnout and employee engagement, in labor market related research designs. I have also done research for the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research among others.
Research Topic: Simulating for…Modeling for…Solidarity
As a master student in Urban planning, under the supervision of Arch. Shany Barath from Disrupt Design Lab and Dr. Davide Schaumann from Inteligent Place Lab I’m using parametric modeling and agent based simulations to study how design based spatial changes in a parametric model of a neighborhood, interact with demographic and psychological characteristics of simulated residents (ie agents) as to the frequency and locus of spontaneous social interactions between these simulated residents. Doing this enables the generation of a ‘social heat map’ for the neighborhood’s parametric model, depicting frequency and locus of the spontaneous social interactions given the design of the neighborhood, and a given demographic and psychological profile of the residents. This may allow integrating urban planning related considerations like social connectedness and community formation processes into much earlier modeling stages in the planning and architectural design of a neighborhood.