Dimitris Papanikolaou, DDes, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, jointly between the School of Architecture and the Department of Software and Information Systems, and he is the founder and director of the Urban Synergetics Lab. His research investigates design and analysis of enabling systems that connect humans, objects, and places cooperatively across scales, physically or digitally. His interests include ubiquitous computing, computer-supported cooperative work, complex systems modeling and simulation, human-machine interaction, decision-support systems, and design research.

He has worked at Microsoft Research (Computational User Experiences and VIBE groups) and at the MIT Media Lab (Smart Cities and Changing Places groups), and he has taught at NYU, MIT, and Harvard. His research has been published in 32 peer-reviewed conference proceedings, journal articles, and book chapters, and has received distinctions including the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the Harvard Deans’ Design Challenge, the Harvard Fellowship on Energy and Environment, and a Knight Foundation grant.

He holds a Doctor of Design (DDes) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, an MSc in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, a SMArchS in Design Computation from MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece.