Francesco Iorio is a co-founder and CEO of Augmenta, where he assembles experts from artificial intelligence, advanced computational science and user-centered design to transform the way buildings are designed and built.
Before Augmenta, Iorio served as Director of Computational Science Research at Autodesk Research where he led a group of researchers and engineers in exploring state-of-the-art computational science projects that pioneered modern generative design.
Previously, Iorio was a solution architect for next generation computing systems at the IBM High Performance Computing Group in Dublin, Ireland, specifically focusing on accelerating financial, engineering and digital media workloads using hybrid high-performance computing platforms.
He holds a MSc in information technology from the University of Liverpool and a PhD in computer science from the University of Toronto, published and presented at multiple scientific conferences, and a co-inventor of several patents.
Most AI work in AEC today is focused everywhere except the hardest problem: the detailed 3D reasoning needed to translate engineering intent into fully coordinated, constructible buildings at scale. That’s the layer that cuts months of time and millions of dollars from project schedules – and it’s what Augmenta is building.
Today, 33 buildings have been designed with Augmenta – including six hyperscale datacenters, and the first AI-designed school in the world, open and occupied. The engine behind those projects is now generalising to full MEP design.
Francesco Iorio and Aaron Szymanski will present what it actually takes to build a foundation model for construction: why LLMs can’t do this, the three problems that had to be solved before any of this could ship, and what it will mean for architects, engineers, and the future of the AEC industry.
