The 2019 "Charles M. Eastman Top PhD Paper prize" was awarded to Ms Veronika Bolshakova, PhD student within 4DCollab project 's team for a paper on "Collective decision-making with 3D and 4D" presented at the 36th CIB W78 Conference in Newcastle.

This award, presented at each of W78's annual international conferences, recognizes the importance of developing top young researchers in the core field of W78, “the application of integrated IT throughout the life-cycle of the design, construction and occupancy of buildings and related facilities”. The award is named after a seminal researcher in this field who has, over his illustrious career, supervised and mentored many of the top researchers found across the world. Chuck Eastman's involvement in W78 dates back to 1988 with a keynote presentation and since then he, and his students, have been strong supporters of the annual series.

Veronika and her supervising team published a paper summarising two years of a pedagogical experiment about collaboration with digital touch-based devices. Students of a Master curriculum in France (Master spécialisé «Architecture Bois Construction », hosted by ENSTIB school) used the tabletop device for project review presentations. Researchers were able to observer and analyse these teams in order to evaluate the user experience. Further, within 4DCollab, these analyses enable formulating new requirements and prototyping of new interactions, using 4D models during synchronous meetings.

The authors acknowledge the committee for his support and recognition, as well as the students and staff who participated in the experiments. Special thanks are also addressed to Immersion, our partner in 4DCollab, for their commitment and support to the academic and research activities.