How a First-Generation Student Became an Designer of New Paradigms

The young architecture student arriving in America from Hyderabad in the early 1990s carried more than luggage—he carried questions that would shape three decades of work. What if education could be the great equalizer? What if institutions could see students not as they are, but as who they might become? How do we expand human potential through design, technology, and education? And what if architecture itself could be reimagined by questioning the very assumptions on which it stands?

Dr. Mahesh Daas found his answers not in theory, but in living them—and the numbers tell a remarkable story.

As a first-generation immigrant and first-generation college student, Daas understood struggle intimately. But he also understood possibility. That dual perspective became his compass as he moved through American higher education, collecting degrees that told their own story of determination: a bachelor’s with honors in India, a master’s recognized for professional promise, and finally a doctorate from Penn, marked with distinction.

But degrees were just the beginning. Over three decades, Daas would publish more than 60 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, author four influential books including the first comprehensive volume on robotics in architecture, and deliver over 80 invited lectures across four continents. He saw architecture not as buildings alone, but as a language for imagining different futures. His approach became distinctive: constantly tracing back to first principles, questioning the assumptions underlying architectural and urban thinking itself. Whether in his writing, his built and unbuilt work, his research, or his teaching, the same thematic threads emerged—a refusal to accept inherited frameworks without examination, a commitment to design that evolves through the integration of imagination, empathy, and technological acuity.

He pioneered work at the intersection of design, robotics, and posthuman thought before these fields became fashionable—writing the first comprehensive book on robotics in architecture, exploring not just what machines might build, but what they might teach us about creativity and what creativity might teach us about being human in an age of increasing automation. His latest work, a dystopian graphic novella illustrated by AI, embodies this philosophy: using technology as a mirror to examine our deepest questions about agency, identity, and futures we might create—or prevent.

Recognition followed. In 2011, at an age when many academics are still finding their footing, Daas became the youngest person—and the first of Indian origin—named an ACSA Distinguished Professor, joining fewer than 2.5% of architectural educators honored since 1984. His peers elected him twice to lead ACADIA, where he also received the Society Award of Excellence, one of the highest honors in architectural computing worldwide. He later served as Chancellor of the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors.

Yet titles never became his identity. While collecting accolades and conducting over 40 tenure and promotion reviews for elite institutions from MIT to Cornell, Daas kept writing—poetry and fiction that explored the existential questions buildings alone couldn’t answer. His scholarly work, his design projects, and his creative writing formed an interconnected web, each strand informing the others, all circling back to those fundamental questions about how we live, what we build, and who we might become.

His leadership transformed institutions wherever he went. At the University of Kansas, he grew enrollment by 8% despite budget cuts, tripled minority faculty representation, and raised $4.5 million in three years—more than the previous century of fundraising combined. He established four innovative research institutes and established a 42-member Dean’s Advisory Board and Goldwyn Goldsmith Guild to drive alumni, philanthropy and industry engagement. Under his deanship, the KU architecture program soared to be listed by AZURE magazine among the top 10 in the world and top 4 in the United States, alongside UCLA, Michigan, and Virginia Tech.

In 2019, Daas took on perhaps his most ambitious project: leading the Boston Architectural College, a 135-year institution ranked among America’s top architecture schools. Here, his biography became strategy—the immigrant student now shaping the institution, the outsider now holding the door open wider. And here, too, his design philosophy found its fullest expression: reimagining an educational institution by questioning its foundational assumptions, integrating technological innovation with human empathy, and insisting that transformation requires both imagination and rigor.

The impact has been extraordinary. Under his leadership, BAC was ranked #1 for Best Graduate School of Architecture by GradReports in 2020—ahead of Yale, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT—based on graduates’ first-year earnings. Enrollment grew from 634 to 761 students—the highest in a decade—with 2024 seeing the largest incoming class in 15 years. Graduation rates jumped from 27% to 39% for undergraduates and from 55% to 70% for graduate students. He increased annual giving by 313% and grew the endowment by 55% in just three years, securing the college’s first and second seven-figure donations in its 135-year history. He stewarded partnerships with 115 firms and community organizations, developed the innovative BAC CloudCanopy™ infrastructure providing 85% of the world access to online programs, and graduated the college’s first-ever majority-minority cohort.

Media outlets from Boston Magazine to NPR-GBH radio noticed something different about his leadership. They called it empathetic, inclusive, visionary. On his monthly appearances discussing culture and ideas, Daas coined a segment title that might serve as his personal motto: “Actual Intelligence”—a reminder that in an age of artificial intelligence, the human kind matters most.

Three decades into his journey, managing a $20 million budget with 387 employees across fourteen academic programs, Daas still asks the same question he carried from Hyderabad: How can education create a more equitable world? But now, from his position as BAC’s eighth president—appointed to a second five-year term—he doesn’t just ask. He builds the answer, one student at a time, proving that the distance between a first-generation immigrant student and transformational leader is measured not in miles or years, but in opportunity seized and then extended to others.

The story isn’t finished. It never is. But with over 60 publications, millions of dollars raised across institutions, thousands of students mentored, and countless lives changed, it’s already proof that education and design, approached by returning to first principles with imagination and empathy, really can transform not just individuals or buildings, but the institutions and assumptions that shape how we all live.