Yanni Alexander Loukissas is a senior researcher with metaLAB (at) Harvard, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His work confronts mounting social and technical challenges in the collection, organization, and interpretation of digital data. Recent projects include tools for critically examining digital collections, solutions for postoperative review, and a visual data narrative of the first lunar landing, which was selected as a finalist for the Information is Beautiful awards. He is the author of Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture (Routledge, 2012), a book about shifting media practices in design and accompanying concerns about the redistribution of control and responsibility. Cutting across formats and disciplines, his work reveals how digital data are reshaping human perception, judgment, and skill, in contemporary life. Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, he subsequently pursued a Master of Science and a PhD at MIT in Design and Computation. He also completed postdoctoral work at the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society. For two years he served as a visiting lecturer at Cornell, where he co-founded surfacecities.com, a research and teaching initiative established to study changing images of cities. He teaches hands-on studios and theory-based seminars on topics including data visualization, urban computing, and the anthropology of technology.
