Hi! I'm David Ledo and I'm a Venezuelan-Canadian designer, scientist, and communicator working as a Principal Research Scientist within Autodesk Research. I'm part of the Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Research Group, where I explore novel creativity support tools leveraging generative AI leading to novel authoring environments and developing better understanding of practitioners’ processes to inform the design of future technologies. I also conduct research visioning and storytelling, where I identify common threads across a myriad of disciplines to describe the current technological and societal landscape and how the research might project into the future.

I received my PhD at the University of Calgary in 2020. During my graduate studies, I worked at multiple academic and industrial institutions in Canada, the US and Europe, including the University of Saskatchewan, Autodesk Research, Aarhus University and Microsoft Research. My research has been recognized in top tier academic venues such as ACM CHI, UIST and DIS, as well as through awards including the Killam Fellowship, the Adobe Research Fellowship, scholarships from NSERC and Alberta Innovates, and four teaching excellence awards, among others.

As a multi-passionate person, I'm always circulating through hobbies, including drawing, flamenco guitar, standup comedy, baking, getting lost in new cities, or playing indie video games.