Since 2007 Mario Doulis has been Professor at Merz Akademie, where he is co-director of the New Media department and active in the master program. From 2003-2007 he was Professor of Interface Design and co-leader of Research and Development at the Academy of Art and Design at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW, where he was also member of the Swiss Design Network. From 2007-2012 he was founder and then head of the Virtual Environment Group at the Institute of 4D–Technologies (i4Ds) at the School of Engineering at FHNW, which became the Institute of Interactive Technologies. After an apprenticeship as a stone sculptor (1987-1991), he began studying industrial design at the University of Design in Pforzheim, which he completed in 1998. As industrial and interface designer he does research and teaches in the field of information visualization, 3D design, and Virtual Reality.
His interdisciplinary approach to art, design and science, and his 25 years of experience in the field of emerging technologies, led to national and international cooperations, e.g. with the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB), the Max-Planck-Institute of Animal Behaviour MPI-AB, and Zukunftskolleg-Institute for Advanced Study, University of Konstanz, with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), Stuttgart, and with the Research Institute for Electrical Communication (RIEC), Tohuku University, Sendai, Japan.
Since 2007 Mario Doulis and his students participated in “POLE” (Project oriented learning environment), an international and interdisciplinary student cooperation project, initiated by Prof. Dr. Christoph Holliger at the FHNW Northern Switzerland (Universities of Applied Sciences), with changing partner universities such as Tecnológico de Monterrey (Department of Industrial Design), Savannah College of Art and Design SCAD (Department of Design Management), Northumbria School of Design (Interactive Media), Aalborg University (Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology), and Blekinge Institute of Technology (Department of Computer Science).
He has several years of experience in research and development activities for research groups in Germany, (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and GMD), as well as companies such as Mercedes-Benz Group and BMW.
