About - caseysimone.com

Caseysimone Ballestas

I am a fourth-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, advised by Dr. Kosa Goucher-Lambert in his Co-Design Lab. I hold an M.Sc. in Strategic Product Design (cum laude) from the Technical University of Delft (NL), where I was advised by Dr. Euiyoung Kim. I also hold a B.A. in Design & Social Psychology from Bennington College (USA), where I was advised by Donald Sherefkin and Ronald Cohen.

I’m always eager to connect with undergrads interested in design engineering research. I am passionate about mentoring emerging scholars and have supported students like Mansidak Singh (re:collect); Vivian Ye (UC Berkeley, MS); Duy Vu (UC Berkeley, BA; TikTok), Sheila Mercado, Saakchi Thapa, Neha Suresh, Timothy Zhou (UC Berkeley, BA); and Gustavo Flores (Albany High School; UCLA) in their academic and industry pursuits. If you’d like to join my research, please reach out!

(*Spring 2026: I am currently accepting new research assistants.)

Research Interests

2025-onward

I have opened up a new thrust of work on LLMs and cognition. Stay tuned!

2020-2025

My research explored the intersection of design, engineering, and cybersecurity. I am particularly focused on the design of ambient intelligent environments and the security challenges posed by these cyber-physical systems. I aimed to understand how design decisions in the early stages influence the vulnerabilities and attack surfaces in these environments.

Publications

Ballestas, C., Singh, M., Vu, D., Fillingim, B., & Goucher-Lambert, K. (2024). Designing Remote Monitoring for Smart Manufacturing Facilities:
Hazard Identification and Classification. ASME IDETC/CIE 2024.
Ballestas, C., Kim, E., Chandrasegaran, S., Rao, V., & Goucher-Lambert, K. (2023). Applying Minor Theory to Engineering Design. ASME IDETC/CIE 2023.
Ballestas, C., Janssens, J., Lanoy, J., & Kim, E. (2022). Design-Engineers’ Selection of Agency: Harm Mitigation in Ambient Intelligent Environments. ASME IDETC/CIE 2022.
Ballestas, C., Chandrasegaran, S., & Kim, E. (2021). A Framework for Centralizing Ethics in the Design Engineering of Spatial Computing Artifacts. ASME IDETC/CIE 2021.

Honors and Awards

Long-Term Research Grant, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), 2025
Cal Cybersecurity Research Fellowship, Center for Longeterm Cybersecurity (CLTC), 2024
Graduate Research Grant to Advance Humanity, Hearts to Humanity Eternal (H2H8), 2023-2024
Digital Transformation of Development (DToD) Fellow, National Science Foundation (NSF), 2022-2024
Chancellor’s Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 2022
Presidential Merit Scholarship, Bennington College, 2010-2014

Industry and Teaching

Outside of academia, I consult on design and cybersecurity globally. As a design strategy consultant, I have worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies, helping them navigate the challenges of product and service innovation. My clients include Airbus, DHL, Intuit, and Nike, among others.

I give talks, conduct interviews, host panels, write articles, and guest edit periodicals on the topics of: XR, Architectural Psychology, Spatial Web, Physical XD, Spatial Computing, AmI, (A)IoT.

📰 READ MORE ABOUT MY WORK IN FRAME

Teaching Experience