Brad Pitt has been spending time with a hugely popular MIT professor, but friends are quick to point out that this is nothing more than a friendship.
According to the Page Six TV, Brad met Neri Oxman recently through an MIT architecture project. Brad is a well-documented architecture aficionado.
"Brad and Neri instantly hit it off, because they share the same passion for architecture, design and art. This is best described as a professional friendship," the source said. "Their friendship has not turned into romance … as both are cautious and this is, again, more of a professional friendship, but Brad is very interested in spending more time with Neri, she is fascinating."
Neri, herself, is an acclaimed architect and an award-winning artist. In 2012, she was named one of the "25 most stylish Bostonians" by the Boston Globe.
"You are correct that they are just friends and she is very impressive," a second friend told Page Six of Brad's relationship with Neri.
Brad is still finalizing his divorce from Angelina Jolie. Neri was previously married to composer Osvaldo Golijov.
According to her MIT bio, Neri, 42, "coined the term, and pioneered the field of, Material Ecology, which considers computation, fabrication, and the material itself as inseparable dimensions of design. In this approach, products and buildings are biologically informed and digitally engineered by, with and for, nature."
Neri's team has also been building 3-D printers capable of printing biological matter and glass. Her work, Page Six said, is included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou, Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Museum of Science.
The brunette brainiac also won an International Earth Award for Future-Crucial Design in 2008, the Vilcek Prize in Design in 2014 and an Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York in 2015.
In a 2016 story in Surface magazine, Museum of Modern Art senior curator for architecture and design Paola Antonelli said Neri is "a person ahead of her time, not of her time. She is very rigorous, taking on a long view on where design needs to be, but at the same time also has an incredible talent and aesthetic flare, like an artist. Whatever she does has ground and credibility in science, but also a universal appeal for everybody, because her work is just so beautiful."