LAURA FORLANO

Biography

Laura Forlano is an Assistant Professor of Design at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. From 2009-2011, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interaction Design Lab in the Departments of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University. Forlano’s research is on the role of information technology in supporting open innovation networks in urban environments with a specific emphasis on the use of mobile, wireless and ubiquitous computing technologies to support collaboration. Her current project “Design Collaborations as Sociotechnical Systems,” which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is an international comparative study that focuses on the role of technology in supporting networks of designers in New York, Barcelona and Brisbane. Forlano received a 2011-2012 Fulbright grant to study social innovation networks in Toronto. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, Microsoft Research, the Urban Communication Foundation and the American Council on Germany. She is co-editor with Marcus Foth, 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, which is to be published by MIT Press in 2011). Her research and writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals including The Information Society, Journal of Community Informatics, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Design Issues and Science and Public Policy and she has been published chapters for books including editor Mark Shepard’s Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press 2011) and The Architecture League of New York’s Situated Technologies pamphlet series and is a regular contributor to their Urban Omnibus blog. Forlano received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University in 2008. Her dissertation, “When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots,” explores the intersection between organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation.

In 2008-2009, while a Kauffman Fellow in Law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, Forlano was part of a collaborative project “Breakout! Escape from the Office” that was included in The Architecture League of New York’s Toward the Sentient City exhibition. From 2007-2011, Forlano was an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School where she teaches courses on Innovation, Technology and the City, New Media and Global Affairs, Service Design, and Design and Everyday Experience. She has also been active in research on public policy issues related to telecommunications and information technology. In 2011, she co-authored with Alison Powell a study “From the Digital Divide to Digital Excellence: Global Best Practices for Municipal and Community Wireless Networks,” for the New America Foundation. Forlano served on the Federal Communication Commission’s Consumer Advisory Panel from 2005-2007. She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association. Forlano received a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University, a Diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor’s in Asian Studies from Skidmore College. She studied at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan from 1993-4. Forlano speaks Japanese and has studied French, Spanish, Italian and German.

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