Margaret Portillo, Ph.D., FIDEC
Associate Dean of Research, College of Design, Construction and Planning
Bio
In the College of Design, Construction and Planning, Margaret Portillo is the Associate Dean for Research + Strategic Initiatives, supporting research-focused faculty, staff, and doctoral students across the schools, departments, centers, and programs in the college. She also helps support university-wide priorities, that now are focusing on the relevant and critical areas of social justice and Artificial Intelligence by encouraging meaningful engagement in research and scholarship occurring in these areas by faculty and students, work that is being highlighted in this year’s DCP research symposium.
Previously, she served as chair of the Department of Interior Design and worked closely with faculty to advance teaching, research while strengthening departmental engagement in the DCP doctoral program. Among faculty advisors statewide, she was honored to be recognized by the Florida Education Foundation with a William R. Jones Award for outstanding mentorship of African American McKnight doctoral fellowship students.
As a researcher, she leverages mixed methods, including narrative inquiry, to explore human-centered design. Recently, she was a co-recipient of an EDRA Certificate of Research Excellence award for a study of mixed-use learning zones on campuses, sponsored by an ASID Transform grant. This commendation recognized translational research significance and practice impact. Currently with colleagues, she is studying transformations reshaping the climate and space of university libraries as part of a national project. Through books, articles, and essays as well as academic and industry-invited presentations, her work has been shared nationally and internationally to advance the knowledge base on creativity, design innovation, and environmental color.
Portillo also is committed to national and international service contributions. For example, she led the research based CIDA standards development project in a three-year process that informed new interior design accreditation standards in 2017. In recognition of sustained contributions to the discipline, she was given a career award by CIDA. Other impact as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Interior Design (2006-2015) led to a revisioning of the journal’s mission, reach and readership with Portillo and the JID Editorial Review Board appreciably elevating the journal’s rankings. For this contribution, she received an IDEC merit award and later became an IDEC Fellow. Recently, she was invited by the International Interior Design Association to serve as a juror for the MidAmerica IIDA competition, recognizing exceptional design work in interior design, and for the InWards IIDA competition, celebrating excellence in interior spaces and products created by interior designers, architects and industrial designers from select North Pacific states and Canadian provinces.
During her tenure at UF, Portillo has thoroughly enjoyed working with the talented and committed faculty, students, administrators and alumni of DCP as well as engaging successfully with industry and practice collaborators to advance the knowledge base through research and guide the next generation of design practitioners and academics.