Participants

http://lauraforlano.org/

Assistant professor of Design at the Design Institute attached to the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, member of the board of NYCWireless and of the Computer Human Interaction Association of New York. She has a Master’s degree in International Affairs, Scientific and Technological Policy and another in Philosophy of Communication, both from the Columbia University in New York. She is currently working on a Fullbright NEXUS programme-funded project, “Networking Social Innovation in Urban Areas”: a study on the role of coworking communities, medialabs, company incubators and hack labs, and the project funded by the National Science Fundation, “Design Collaborations as Sociotechnical Systems”: a comparative international study focusing on the role of technology as a platform for generating work networks for designers in New York, Barcelona and Brisbane. She is co-editor, with Marcus Forth, Christine Satchell and Martin Gibbs of “From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement” published by MIT Press in 2011. She has written a large number of articles focusing on aspects of collaboration and innovation in technology and has received numerous awards for her research work in America, Asia and Europe.