Prof. Mario Santana Quintero awarded UNESCO Chair for World Heritage Convention

Canada’s first UNESCO Chair supporting the World Heritage Convention has been awarded to Professor Mario Santana Quintero, who is developing new technologies to conserve and protect the world’s heritage assets from natural and human-made elements.

Dr. Santana-Quintero is a professor at Carleton University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, cross-appointed with the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism.

UNESCO chairs represent a team at a research institution that partners with the United Nations organization, UNESCO, to advance knowledge and practice in an area of common priority. Santana Quintero, as the UNESCO Chair for Digital Twins, will mobilize efforts to design and implement digital twins tailored for the conservation of world heritage in the context of climate change.

Based at the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS), a research lab affiliated with the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, he will co-lead an international team of researchers at 16 institutions spanning six continents. 

Also contributing to the research team are Professor Stephen Fai, director of CIMS, and Susan Ross, an associate professor in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, with a cross-appointment to the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism.

The team is incorporating methods from engineering, design and architecture to create digital twins, an emerging approach to preserving global heritage assets using dynamic 3D virtual replicas that integrate diverse data streams.

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