Gabby Bustos Lopez

Gabriela I. Bustos is a bilingual Venezuelan architect and artist living in Milwaukee since 2011. Gabriela’s degrees with honors include a bachelor’s degree in architecture with a Summa Cum Laude award, an honorable and publishing mention in a master’s degree in informatics in architecture, and an honorable and publishing mention in a doctorate in architecture at the University of Zulia, Venezuela (LUZ). Gabriela’s emphasis and passion centers on Digital Technology through Extended Reality. She embraced her education and shared her knowledge as a professor and a researcher at the University of Zulia (LUZ) from 1999 to 2015. Her research emphasis focuses on the implementation of virtual reality during the process of architecture design in studio teaching. She led, designed and implemented digital programs of virtual reality at the School of Architecture and Design, University of Zulia (Maracaibo, Venezuela). She served as the director of the Master of Informatics in Architecture program, and coordinator and chair of Digital Art at the Contemporary Art Museum of Zulia, Venezuela from 2008-2011. She was the director of Interactive Architecture in the Digital Design Program FAD-LUZ, 2009-2011. Gabriela left her imprint in research by discovering the implications of the design teaching-learning process with the use of digital technology through virtual reality and interactive multiuser living worlds in architectural design studios. Gabriela continues researching to generate architectural design assisted with XR as a studio professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning (SARUP) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2018-present). Gabriela founded the first VR elective at SARUP and PLURIS XR Mentoring and Consulting team. Gabriela directed the virtual version of the Solar Shrine Project by Antwane Lee in Burning Man 2020 as well as the Virtual Campus of SARUP 2020.