Congratulations to Gonzalo Martínez Santos of the University of Toronto, who was awarded second place prize by Esri Canada for the 2023 Esri Young Scholars Award program for "A Generative Design Tool for Designing Complete Communities: Using Genetic Algorithms for Community Design Optimization." Martínez Santos is supervised by a faculty affiliate of the Smart Freight Centre.
Gonzalo Martínez Santos is a 4th-year student of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto majoring in Machine Intelligence Engineering and working on his undergraduate thesis project under the supervision of Professor Matthew Roorda.
Gonzalo is passionate about cities, mobility, and urbanism. His computational background and his experience with city modelling and visualization allows him to contribute to the development of urban generative design tools at the University of Toronto.
Gonzalo is grateful for this recognition by Esri Canada and says this award will further motivate his career aspirations:
I am delighted to have been awarded the second-place prize for the Esri Young Scholar Award. This recognition further motivates me to pursue my aspiration of contributing to the future of city planning and design.
Gonzalo Martínez Santos
Gonzalo appreciates the support of everyone involved in his research project:
I would like to thank Sara Wagner (PhD Candidate at U of T) for allowing me to participate in her research project, Dr. Sara Diamond (OCAD) for her continuous ideas and input, David Kossowsky (Esri Canada Limited) for developing the CityEngine visuals, and Dr. Matthew Roorda (U of T) for supervising this project.
Gonzalo Martínez Santos
Professor Roorda expects future applications of this generative design tool in a variety of urban design applications including the optimization of freight access in communities, community health and social justice, and enhancing the public participation process for urban design.
This research was funded by Esri Canada Limited and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.