
Hi I'm Pilar Aranda Bada, Pi for my friends. I was born in Spain and pretty much raised on the early internet, being the later a digital place where curiosity is currency and reality is always negotiable. I’m most comfortable standing at the edge of the unknown, staring at the abyss, and wondering what the fabric of reality is really made of.
I currently work as a technologist at Meta, where I help bring ambitious ideas into existence. Driving critical launches for the Meta AI app and the Neural Band, and previously shaping the systems that power how the Metaverse receives and processes its assets. My work lives in the space where systems become experiences.
In 1992, I fell into a magical well called virtual reality. That early encounter offered me a fleeting glimpse of alternate worlds and quietly rewired how I see this one. It led me first to engineering, then deeper into design and communication. Disciplines that taught me how ideas move from thought to form.
In 2016, my curiosity pulled me further inward. Wanting to better understand simulations, perception, and digital reality, I built my own education by stitching together knowledge from multiple institutions: Human–Computer Interaction at MIT CSAIL, VR/AR development at the New York Film Academy, and User Experience design at General Assembly in New York City.
Today, I’m studying physics, drawn by the same questions that first captured me decades ago, only now I’m learning to ask them with equations. I aspire to pursue a PhD in the coming years,continuing a lifelong exploration of reality, tracing the edges where it bends and revealing its seams.
Education
MIT CSAIL
NY Film Academy
European Institute of Design
Polytechnical University of Valencia
Previous Projects
Meta
Herman Miller
Sony Music
IKEA
Rolex
Ernst & Young
Awards
MIT XR Hackathon 2019
XR Brain Jam 2018 & 2019
Unity NYC XR Jam 2017 & 2019
Webby Awards 2019