FULL-TIME FACULTY

Maria Chumak

Lecturer - Fashion Design
France

Maria has a BA in Illustration and Fine Arts, as well as a Baccalaureate Diploma in Fashion Design Technology. She has over 15 years of experience in advertising and fashion design, drawing and illustration for design projects, fabrics, and trend forecasting agencies and websites. After gaining extensive experience in the fashion industry, she has more recently been teaching life drawing and supervising fashion concept development projects in higher education institutions. Maria is also the co-founder of an eco-design brand.

Tobias Fifield

Lecturer - Product Design
USA

Tobias Fifield’s professional work experience as a designer in industrial design influenced his skills in the visual arts and his teaching after gaining experience in stereo lithography applications and the rapid prototyping industry with NIKE Inc. Toby has worked alongside NASA engineers assisting with fabrications of full-scale mock-ups, and has held international visual art workshops in universities, art museums, and exposition centers in Japan and Korea. He completed his undergraduate education in the Fine Arts ending up majoring in Industrial Design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He also holds an MA in Education.

Chris Hand

Lecturer - Multimedia Design
UK

Chris has lectured in UK universities since 1990, covering a wide range of subjects from Graphic Design, Product Design and Interactive Media Design to Interaction Design, Human Computer Interaction and Virtual Environments.  Visiting positions include Design Researcher at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, and Tutor at Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh University, and Royal College of Art, London. He has also taught in Croatia and Malaysia.

As a freelance Interaction Designer, Chris specializes in prototyping using hardware and software, and has recently worked for Intel, Superflux, Dunne & Raby, Scotland’s Housing Expo, KithKin and the Future Laboratory. Chris has an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art and a BSc in Computer Engineering from the University of Manchester, UK.

Chinmay Hegde

Lecturer - Interior Design
India

Chinmay has an Indian degree in Architecture, masters degree in Interior Design from Arizona State University (USA) and an MBA from Deakin University (Australia). He also has 6 years of professional work experience as an Interior Designer and as an Architect.

Chinmay brings to class his global academic knowledge and merges it with local professional practice. He has also been into teaching at various institutions in India. Chinmay has been an Interior design faculty with Raffles since the start of 2011.

Vipin Jose

Lecturer - Fashion Design
India

Vipin has 8 years of experience in the fashion industry and academic field. During his journey in fashion he has worked with designers, companies and retail stores. He has designed numerous creations which apparently sold in stores. He has done many fashion shows and created designer wear for different clientele. He is fluent in skills like fashion art; pattern making, fabric developments etc. In addition, he is a talented CAD artist. Apart from this he is a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Management. His journey goes on, helping students to make their dream come true. As a teacher and designer he strives to create out of-the-box designs and concepts, to push the envelope, and welcome new challenges with enthusiasm.

Aigars Liepins

Lecturer - Graphic Design
Latvia

Aigars has an Advanced Diploma, Bachelors degree and Masters from the Art Academy of Latvia. In the mid-nineties, he walked into his first advertising agency DDB as Art Director, and he also worked as Art Director for Young & Rubicam in Riga and Euro RSCG until 1999. He then co-founded an advertising agency X-ray Ltd, a Latvian-Estonian joint venture. He has been with the Raffles Millennium International team as a lecturer in visual communication since June 2010.

Erick Martinez

Lecturer - Product Design
Mexico

Erick  completed his graduation in Industrial Design from Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in 2006. He studied Transportation design, car & aeronautical Interior design from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany in 2004. He started his professional career with Volkswagen, Mexico in 2003. He has also worked in the Exterior Design Department of Volkswagen, Wolfsburg, Germany. He was appointed as a Professor of Industrial Design at I.T.E.S.M, Mexico. His aim is to create products as per the market and consumer needs, thereby achieving market recognition, and best profits.

AJ Mallari

Lecturer – Interior Design
Philippines

AJ Mallari’s initial venture in the development sector, designing learning spaces for marginalised communities in the Philippines, has directed him to spearhead several projects for various non-profits across Southeast Asia in differing creative capacities including branding, photography and product development. He has continuously sought ways to effectively use design in furthering social innovation. More recently, he has looked into heightening empathy in the design process to aid designers in delivering more inclusive and holistic design solutions as part of his MA dissertation.

AJ was awarded the Audi Design Foundation scholarship to study MA Design for Development at Kingston University London, and he holds an honours BSc degree in Interior Design from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Patrícia Rodrigues

Lecturer – Interior Design
Portugal

Patrícia has 6 years experience working as an architect in Portugal, specialising in interior work and building rehabilitations. She has also worked for the Portuguese ministry of health, being responsible for the spatial reorganisation and maintenance of several health centres in the municipality of Cascais on the Atlantic coast.

After attending art school, Patrícia studied for her diploma in Architecture from the Escola Superior Artística in Porto, Portugal. She also holds a professional certificate in Window Dressing from the Insituto de Ensino Profissional Intensivo in Lisbon.

PART-TIME AND VISITING FACULTY

Alongside our full-time faculty we also benefit from the input and experience of several part-time and visiting lecturers, who work in the design industry locally.  We also regularly invite guest jury members into college to critique student projects.