I am an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, with a joint appointment between the School of Architecture and the Department of Software and Information Systems. Previously I was a Postdoc at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). I hold an Doctor of Design (DDes) from Harvard GSD, an MSc in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, a SMArchS in Design Computation from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and a professional Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece.

My research combines data, complex systems modeling, and information technology, to analyze and design, systems and technologies for intelligent urban infrastructure and mobility systems. A central question in my work is how movements and concentrations of human, physical, and information resources shape the potential of urban systems and how novel interactive technologies and design strategies may enhance it. My methods draw on a diversity of backgrounds including complex systems modeling and simulation, data visualization, urban economics, transportation/operations research, design research, social computing, and human-computer interaction. I contribute to the fields of planning, architecture, design, engineering, and information/computer/social science, in three ways:

• Urban Modeling and Simulation: I develop data-driven system dynamics models to understand how movements and concentrations of human, physical, and information resources affect performance of urban cyber-physical systems.
• Control Mechanism Design: I design and study mechanisms for collective control, and I assess their equilibrium dynamics analytically and experimentally.
• Connective Technologies and Interfaces: I design and prototype novel human-computer interfaces, sensing technologies, and embedded systems to close the loop between information and action in the built environment.

I have worked at Microsoft Research in Redmond (Computational User Experiences / Vibe / Lab of Things) on applications of the Internet of Things, and at the Smart Cities and Changing Places groups at the MIT Media Lab on intelligent urban environments. I teach courses on intelligent urban mobility, interactive systems, and integrative design at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) of New York University (NYU), MIT, and Harvard GSD.

I have more than eight years of extensive experience in some of the most groundbreaking research on future mobility worldwide. At the Smart Cities group of the MIT Media Lab, working with General Motors, I co-developed an intelligent sharing system of electric foldable cars with minimal parking footprint, named by TIME magazine as the best automotive invention of 2007. My research on on-demand mobility has received distinctions across disciplines including the $100K Buckminster Fuller Challenge that awards “outstanding visionary projects with the capacity to solve humanity’s most pressing problems”; the $15K Harvard’s Deans’ Design Challenge: Urban Life 2030, a university-wide contest organized by the schools of Design (GSD), Engineering (SEAS), and Business (HBS) that awarded “projects that envision order of magnitude improvements to the livability of our cities by 2030”; the $25K Harvard Kennedy School’s Meyer Transportation Award; the MIT Transportation program’s showcase award for the best research in Economics, Finance, Policy and Land Use categories; and Harvard University’s Fellowship on Energy and Environment.

I have authored more than 20 articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, academic journals, and edited volumes; I have organized conference panels and exhibitions; and I have served as a scientific committee in conferences, in areas of design, digital media, and computation.
Download my Research Statement and my CV below: