Peter Pfanner is an industrial designer, interaction designer, experience designer, innovator, and educator. Currently, Peter serves as the executive director of the UIC Innovation Center, a collaborative education and development center that operates at the nexus of research, education, and industry. Through targeted programs and initiatives, the Innovation Center brings together students and faculty across a wide spectrum of backgrounds and experience to work on internal and external projects, driving multidisciplinary innovation and inspiring new innovators.
Over the past three decades, Peter has served as design and creative director of numerous projects around the world. His experience spans mobile communications, consumer electronics, medical, office products, furniture, architecture, and materials science at consultancies, corporations, and universities.
Peter’s work has been featured in the Art Institute of Chicago “Musecast,” the Art Institute of Chicago A+D series Young Chicago, Business Week, Forbes.com, Brand Week, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Design Culture Now, and ID Magazine, among other venues.
The recipient of IDSA/IDEA/Business Week, IF Design Hanover, Red Dot, Cooper Hewitt Museum, Good Design, ID Magazine, and GE Plastics Design awards, he has exhibited work at the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt, and the Chicago Athenaeum.
Peter holds seventeen design and utility patents and is a 1st Dan Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do.
