Jacqueline Karaaslanian is a learning architect and collaboration specialist, Co-Founder of Learning Learning Architects, and a Co-Founder and Board Member of the Fab Lab Armenia Education Foundation. She brings together people across disciplines and cultures to turn emerging ideas into meaningful action.

Her collaboration with MIT professors Seymour Papert and Nicholas Negroponte began in France in 1981 at the Centre Mondial Informatique, continuing at the MIT Media Lab from 1983 to 2009, where she led special projects and managed research groups. Working alongside these pioneers shaped her enduring commitment to constructionist learning—learning through making, experimentation, and collaborative problem solving.

As Founding Executive Director of the Luys Education Foundation (2009–2018), she connected talent development with Armenia’s future. Her international collaborations have included Schlumberger’s SEED program, Le Cube, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, INVIVIA Studio, the LEGO Foundation, and ministries across several continents.

Her contribution to “Nexial Design: A New Intelligence for a Hyperconnected World” reflects a lifelong practice of connecting knowledge, people, and tools—turning connection into shared understanding and the capacity to imagine, build, and act together.

Onik Babajanyan is an embedded systems engineer, digital fabrication educator, and CEO of Fab Lab Armenia Education Foundation. His work connects engineering, education, and community problem-solving, helping people develop the skills and confidence to turn ideas into working prototypes. Born in Yerevan, his passion for robotics began at Ayb High School and led him to study Radiophysics at Yerevan State University, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in parallel to his functions as CEO of Fab Lab Armenia, Education Foundation.

His career brings together technical expertise, teaching, and leadership under demanding conditions. He was part of the team that won second place at the 2016 National Robotics Challenge in Ohio, mentored students at Ayb High School’s FabLab, and developed firmware for mission-critical hardware at Vgate LLC. As a communications platoon commander in the Armenian Armed Forces, he led ten soldiers and maintained essential communications during the 44-Day War in Artsakh and subsequent operations—experience that strengthened his approach to responsibility, teamwork, and reliable systems.

A 2022 Fab Academy graduate, Onik Babajanyanjoined Fab Lab Armenia after his military service, becoming Director of Operations and Education Programs in 2025 and CEO in 2026. He continues to teach as a Fab Academy instructor, bringing the perspective of a learner into his leadership of the foundation.

For Onik Babajanyan, access to technology gains its value through the people, mentorship, and shared knowledge surrounding it. His work supports Fab Lab Armenia’s growing role as a regional learning hub, connecting students in Armenia and beyond with the global Fab Lab community. From mentoring international learners to helping the team deploy a functioning pop-up lab on a week timeframe, he combines educational ambition with the practical organization needed to make it work.

At the symposium organized by Fab lab Armenia on Nexial Design, his presentation focuses on the transition from Mass Production to Personal Production. He draws on a decade of Fab Lab Armenia’s experience to explore what young people can build when they have tools, a network, and a real problem to solve.

His contribution gives practical expression to nexial thinking: connecting disciplines, people, and resources to move from understanding a challenge to building a solution. It asks how learning through making can become an everyday opportunity—and how individuals and communities can gain the capacity to design and produce what they need.

Vahagn Ghukasyan is an Armenian artist, curator, museum professional, and Associate Professor in Art. Based in Gyumri, he works across video art, painting, installation, sound art, and sculpture. His practice connects artistic experimentation with cultural policy, institution building, and regional arts education.

He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Painting from the Gyumri Branch of the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. In 2015–2016, he specialized in General Museology in Japan through JICA’s “Museums and Community Development” programme.

Ghukasyan has held solo exhibitions in Armenia, Japan, Lebanon, and the United States, and participated in international exhibitions and residencies. In 2010, he received the Youth Prize of the President of the Republic of Armenia for cinema and art.

He founded the alternative mobile Gyumri Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011 and directed the Gallery of Mariam and Eranuhi Aslamazyan Sisters from 2015 to 2019. He has taught at the Academy’s Gyumri Branch since 2010 and served as its Director since 2019. An ICOM Armenia board member since 2023, he develops platforms that support artists, connect education with communities, and expand access to contemporary art beyond the capital.

Anna Gargarian is a curator and creative strategist working at the intersection of culture, education, and ecosystem development. Born and raised in Boston, she has been based in Yerevan, Armenia, for over a decade. With an academic background in art history and chemistry (NYU), and art restoration (Palazzo Spinelli), her work bridges artistic practice, scientific inquiry, and systems thinking.Anna Gargarian is a curator and creative strategist working at the intersection of culture, education, and ecosystem development. Born and raised in Boston, she has been based in Yerevan, Armenia, for over a decade. With an academic background in art history and chemistry (NYU), and art restoration (Palazzo Spinelli), her work bridges artistic practice, scientific inquiry, and systems thinking.

Her international curatorial practice spans Europe, Asia, and the United States, including projects at the Beijing International Art Biennale (2015) and Venice International Art Biennale (2017). From 2014 to 2020, she founded and directed HAYP Pop Up Gallery, a nomadic contemporary art platform in Armenia. From 2022 to 2025, she designed and led the EU-funded AGBU Katapult Creative Accelerator Program, a landmark initiative catalyzing Armenia’s creative economy. Katapult incubated over 200 businesses and distributed €1 million in seed funding to over 100 creative businesses and cultural institutions, strengthening Armenia’s creative economy.

Today, Gargarian leads design and development initiatives at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia, advancing interdisciplinary education and research. Her current work focuses on transforming the Academy’s Dilijan Campus into a center for research and practice on craft, material, and landscape, connecting art, science, ecology, and local knowledge. Across her work, Gargarian builds platforms, partnerships, and programs that connect disciplines and sectors, cultivating creative ecosystems in which culture becomes a catalyst for innovation and sustainable development.

Narek Aslikyan is an education entrepreneur and ecosystem builder working at the intersection of technology, talent development, and public policy. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Armenian Code Academy (ACA), Executive Director of the Technological Education Foundation (TEF), a Board Member at the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE), and a Partner at Step Consulting.

Since founding ACA in 2015, he has grown it into a cornerstone of Armenia’s technology talent pipeline. The Academy has trained more than 18,000 professionals, attracted over 80,000 applicants, and built partnerships with more than 150 employers. It is estimated to have trained around a fifth of the country’s technology workforce. Through TEF, he works to broaden access to technological education, connecting talent with opportunities for professional growth and participation in Armenia’s development.

Narek is also Co-Founder and CEO of GMC Academy, which brings practical AI education to healthcare professionals, including through darman.ai, an AI learning platform for physicians. This work connects technological knowledge with medical expertise, helping professionals apply emerging tools within their own fields.

At the Nexial Design symposium—“A New Intelligence for a Hyperconnected World”—Narek brings a practical perspective on connecting learning, talent, and enterprise. His work illustrates how education can cross disciplinary boundaries, bringing AI into dialogue with professional knowledge and human needs. It speaks directly to the symposium’s ambition: developing people who can connect knowledge across fields and turn it into real-world solutions.

Dr. Muradyan is a cultural studies scholar whose work explores how cultural policy, heritage, and collective memory shape communities and their futures. She leads the Cultural Heritage Monitoring research group at Armenia’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography and has lectured at Yerevan State University since 2013, where she earned her PhD in History.

Her research examines Soviet and post-Soviet cultural policy, the transformation of public cultural spaces, and the protection of heritage threatened by conflict and displacement. Through studies of museums, houses of culture, and Armenia’s border settlements, she investigates the relationship between cultural spaces and community life—connecting questions of governance and preservation with those of identity, participation, and belonging. She has led research on the transformation of public cultural space in border communities and contributes to the documentation and monitoring of Artsakh’s endangered heritage through Monument Watch.

She has authored or co-authored around 30 scholarly articles and three monographs, including Cultural Policy in Soviet and Post-Soviet Armenia (2025) and The Museums of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh): Through Peace, War, and Displacement (2025). Her work also includes contributions to the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends. She shares her research internationally, with recent talks at Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Södertörn University, and the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki.

During the Symposium on Nexial Design: A new Intelligence for an Interconnected World, her talk, “Heritage as a Common Good: Culture, Wellbeing, and Our Responsibility to Future Generations,” she brings cultural research into dialogue with the design of our shared future. She invites us to consider heritage as a living public resource that sustains community wellbeing, identity, and social resilience—and to ask how today’s choices can keep it accessible, meaningful, and generative for future generations.

Serob Khachatryan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yerevan State University, where he has taught since 1997, and Head of the Education Committee at the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF). For more than three decades, he has connected philosophical inquiry with practical educational change, working across teaching, public policy, community engagement, and professional development.

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of the Education newspaper and Executive Director of COAF, he brings experience spanning classrooms, institutions, and communities. As an independent expert, he has advised the World Bank, the European Union, IOM Armenia, and SALAR International on education decentralization, school–community cooperation, curriculum reform, and the monitoring of EU budget support for education.

He designs and delivers training in critical thinking, problem solving, digital tools, and media literacy for educators and public service professionals. He has also trained trainers for FIDE’s Chess in School program and currently contributes to the M.A.M. Foundation’s AI and Education project.

Co-author of three school Social Studies textbooks and two books, and author of more than 30 scientific articles and educational manuals, his research explores values education, the philosophy of education, adult learning, and social-emotional learning.

At Nexial Design, he brings this perspective to the possibilities of rural Armenia. Often described through limited access and lagging development, village communities emerge in his presentation as natural homes for powerful distributed learning. He explores what a quality village school can become: a place where local knowledge, creativity, and global connections meet, contributing as an active, creative node in a national and international learning network.

Anoush is an art technologist and interdisciplinary practitioner whose work connects art, digital fabrication, material research, and education. She is Head of Creative Research and Programs at Fab Lab Armenia Education Foundation and Fabricademy Program Lead in Armenia.

With a background in art management and curatorial practice, Anoush has expanded her work into experimental making, material research, and the development of interdisciplinary learning environments. Her practice brings a curator’s ability to connect ideas and perspectives into the hands-on exploration of materials, tools, and processes.

A graduate of both Fab Academy and Fabricademy, she works with artists, students, designers, and educators across local and international contexts. Through her engagement with the global Fab Lab Network, she connects international knowledge and experimentation with the development of local capacity in Armenia, including initiatives linked to Fab Lab Gyumri and regional partners.

Her current research explores material intelligence, living systems, open-source culture, and the relationship between traditional knowledge and contemporary technology. These interests open questions about how we learn from the properties and behavior of materials, how knowledge is shared, and how cultural practices can inform new approaches to design.

Her work offers a practical expression of the nexial design mindset: connecting knowledge across disciplines and turning those connections into experiments, learning experiences, and collaborative projects. She brings to the conference a perspective grounded in making—where art, technology, and the living world become complementary sources of understanding and possibility.

Erika Mirzoyan is an Immersive Media Designer at Fab Lab Armenia Education Foundation, a Fabricademy Global Instructor, and a biomaterials explorer. Her work brings together graphic design, textile traditions, digital fabrication and material experimentation to explore new relationships between cultural heritage, technology and the natural environment.

With a background in graphic design and a longstanding practice in embroidery and traditional crafts, Erika approaches design as a way to tell stories and create meaningful learning experiences. Her connection to nature, shaped partly by her years as young AGBU Scout, informs her exploration of natural dyes, plant fibres and experimental biomaterials.

Her Fabricademy project, Threads of Tradition, reimagines Armenian mythology as a modular textile book, combining embroidery, appliqué and layered fabrics to invite discovery through touch and storytelling. The project was selected for ARTeFAB, an international exhibition at MIT Media Lab. In 2026, she was also recognised among the Top 3 Makers at Maker Faire Porto, where she presented work exploring clay bioleather garments and accessories.

At Fab Lab Armenia, Erika develops creative projects and educational experiences grounded in experimentation and learning by making. Through her design and teaching, she connects Armenian cultural knowledge with international fabrication communities, inviting others to explore how local traditions and materials can inspire new possibilities.