NE QUAD CONFERENCE 2025
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
KEYNOTES & OTHERS
Get to know our keynotes and speakers before you arrive! We have an exciting lineup of industry leaders, innovators, and creatives ready to share their expertise and insights. From groundbreaking design strategies to career-shaping advice, this is your chance to learn from the best.
Kelly Hayes McAlonie
Kelly Hayes McAlonie, FAIA, LEED AP is an architect and the Director of Campus Planning at the University at Buffalo. A leader in educational architecture, she has played a key role in UB’s transformative projects, including the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. A past President of AIA New York State (2012), Kelly’s career has been dedicated to shaping learning environments, from playgrounds to higher education spaces. She is also the founder of Architecture+Education, a nationally recognized program that introduces children to design, and a co-creator of the Architecture and Design Academy in Buffalo Public Schools.
Gregory Delaney
Gregory Delaney is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, where he teaches architecture history, urban analysis, and design studios at both undergraduate and graduate levels. His work navigates the intersections of architecture, urban design, and critical preservation, fostering cross-disciplinary thinking and public engagement in design. Committed to experiential learning, he integrates site-based analysis, community engagement, and travel into his teaching.
Randy Fernando
Randy Fernando is a multi-faceted designer exploring the intersections of digital fabrication, material innovation, and sustainable technologies in architecture. His international travels have shaped his perspective, inspiring a conscious design approach that balances beauty with community impact. His research focuses on immersive environments, bio-based materials, ecological analysis, and AI-driven design workflows. Beyond architecture, Randy’s background in music, dance, photography, and film fosters interdisciplinary collaborations, pushing the boundaries of design exploration.
Albert Chao
Albert Chao is a designer working at the intersection of technology, art, and architecture. His expertise spans digital fabrication, computational design, and Building Information Modeling. He specializes in 2D drafting, 3D modeling, and environmental simulations using tools like Revit, Rhino, and Grasshopper. Albert resides in Coles House, an evolving experimental live-work space that explores adaptive reuse, material innovation, and the intersection of architecture and everyday life.
Dennis Maher
Dennis Maher is an artist and designer working at the intersection of sculpture, installation, and architecture. He creates immersive environments from found and built fragments, evoking dream-like spaces in constant transformation. As the founder of Assembly House 150 in Buffalo, he merges art, architecture, and education, repurposing an 1850s church into an evolving architectural dreamscape. His work explores themes of home, memory, and the surreal within the familiar, most notably in The Fargo House, his ongoing 15-year living experiment in reconstruction and assemblage.
Seth Amman
Seth Amman, AIA LEED AP, is the founder and principal of Arch&Type, a Buffalo-based architecture and design studio recognized for its award-winning projects that blend digital fabrication with local craft. His practice spans community-focused spaces, adaptive reuse, and collaborations with artists and makers across the region. In addition to practice, Seth teaches design studios and foundational courses at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, where he mentors the next generation of architects. Active in Buffalo’s civic and cultural landscape, he contributes to neighborhood initiatives and public realm projects that connect architecture to community and place.
Gregory Serweta
Maia Peck
Gregory Serweta, AIA, NCARB, and Maia Peck, NOMA, are co-founders of their Buffalo-based multidisciplinary architecture and design practice, Serweta Peck, whose projects include small-scale residential, commercial and cultural projects, site-specific interactive installations, and exhibition designs. Their design philosophy is to seek out the extraordinary in the everyday, strive to elevate our built environment to be inviting and inclusive to all, and collaborate with compassion and empathy when working with clients and communities. In addition to their practice, they are faculty at the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning where they teach undergraduate and graduate design studios and media courses. Maia also serves as the Director of Exhibitions for the School of Architecture and Planning.
Presentation Title: Objects of Affection – Medina Triennial Hub
Merritt Bucholz
Merritt Bucholz is an American architect and founding partner of Bucholz McEvoy Architects, a highly regarded architecture firm based in Dublin, Ireland established in 1996 with Karen McEvoy. He is founding Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture University of Limerick, where he serves as head of the School of Architecture and Product Design.
Michael Hoover
Michael Hoover is an Adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, where he teaches courses in structural design, building technology, and core studios at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is an Architectural Designer at Studio NORTH Architecture, an award-winning architecture practice located in Buffalo, NY. His work focuses on small scale projects which interrogate the relationships between adaptive reuse, construction, and fabrication through a design-build approach. Hoover holds a B.A. in Environmental Design (17’) and an M. Arch (20’) from the University at Buffalo where he received the Chair’s Award for Studio Excellence.
Christopher Romano, RA, LEEP AP
Christopher Romano is an architect and an educator appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. Academic affiliations include the Material Culture Graduate Research Group and faculty co-lead within S.M.A.R.T. (Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotics Community of Excellence). His research and creative practice are focused on the theoretical and pragmatic bridges that integrate material and structural ingenuity with architectural experience. As a methodology – he pursues research inquiry through hands‐on investigation, installation, architectural fabrication, and one‐to‐one production. He is a licensed architect in the State of New York, LEED accredited and director of Studio NORTH, a creative practice dedicated to assembling interdisciplinary teams of technical specialists to deliver innovative responses to projects that require a high degree of architectural and engineering integration. This work has been recognized with several awards which include the TEX-FAB SKIN Competition winner, the Architects Newspaper Fabrication Award, multiple Architects Newspaper Product Awards, multiple AIA New York State Design Awards, and multiple Architizer A+ Awards. In addition, he is an active façade specialist and research consultant for Rigidized Metals Corp. in Buffalo, NY and has built relationships with regional manufactures and community organizations that include Holcim Concrete, Southside Precast, Thermal Foams, Alp Steel, Buffalo Wire Works, Boston Valley Terracotta, Timberbuilt, and the Buffalo Maritime Center.
