Biography

William J. Mitchell and the members of the Smart Cities research group are creating innovative ways to change how we live in urban areas through, in part, the application of new technologies that enable urban energy efficiency and sustainability, and enhance opportunity, equity, and cultural creativity. Smart Cities research is particularly concerned with the emerging roles of networked intelligence in fabrication and construction, urban mobility, building design and intelligently responsive operation, and public space. The group explores the new forms and functions of cities in the digital electronic era, and suggests design and planning directions for the future.

Mitchell is director of the MIT Design Laboratory, holds the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. (1954) Professorship, and directs the Media Lab's Smart Cities research group. He was formerly dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, both at MIT. Before coming to MIT, he was the Travelstead Professor of Architecture and director of the Master in Design Studies program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; he has also served as head of the Architecture/Urban Design program at UCLA's Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and he has taught at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, and Cambridge universities. Mitchell holds a BArch from the University of Melbourne, an MED from Yale University, and an MA from Cambridge. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 1997 he was awarded the annual Appreciation Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan, and he is currently chair of the National Academies Committee on Information Technology and Creativity.

Mitchell's publications include: Imagining MIT: Designing a Campus for the 21st Century (2007), Placing Words: Symbols, Space, and the City (2005), Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (2003), e-topia: Urban Life, Jim—But Not As We Know It (1999); High Technology and Low-Income Communities, with Donald A. Schön and Bish Sanyal (1998); City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (1995); The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (1992); and The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation, and Cognition (1990).