Bard Graduate Center is devoted to the study of decorative arts, design history, and material culture through research, advanced degrees, exhibitions, publications, and events.

Nima Valibeig is an associate Professor and former head of the Architectural and Urban Conservation Department at the Art University of Isfahan. He is a well-known researcher in urban history, the application of mathematics and geometry in art and architecture, Islamic architecture, and masonry building. He is also an analyst and archivist of old descriptive and visualized documents of tangible and intangible heritage and oral history, and is currently using Novel deep learning for Cultural Properties Deterioration Detection.

With a background in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, Valibeig chose to enter the field of traditional art and architecture to merge the knowledge of geometry and engineering with the knowledge of vernacular architecture. Consequently, he discovered and documented the specific secret numbers used in Iranian art and architecture. Also, by studying the oral history of art and architecture, he came to understand the technology of the construction of masonry buildings. Valibeig has gathered executive knowledge and design methods from more than 100 traditional masters of Iranian art and has created the largest archive of the oral history of Iranian architecture. He is also known as an active member of the training committee of the Isfahan Tourist Guide Association because of his special knowledge in the field of urban history. He has been teaching architecture courses for years; the result of his academic activities is the guidance of more than sixteen Ph.D. students and ninety master’s students in various fields of art and architecture. Valibeig has published more than ninety papers in various scientific journals in both English and Farsi and has published eleven books so far. He is a historical monument expert witness, advising courts in the field of all legal actions related to historical monuments and sites. He is also a certified construction auditor. He studied the use of wooden, brick, stone, and gypsum decorations, specifically in the building façade. His current research focus is on 3D simulation models and methods to combine artificial intelligence with heritage conservation as well as physical segregation and marginalization to gain a deeper understanding of concepts of equality and justice among multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies. In his spare time, he has extracted and classified forgotten ancient words from very ancient lexicons and texts, which led him to publish three books in this field.