Assoc. Dir, SENSEable City

Assaf Biderman teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Associate Director of theSENSEable City Laboratory, a research group that explores the “real- time city” by studying the increasing deployment of sensors and networked hand-held electronics, as well as their relationship to the built environment.

At the 2006 Venice Biennale, the group revealed the world’s first city-scale dynamic maps, describing the movement of pedestrians, busses, and taxis in real-time. In preparation for the 2009 U.N. Summit on Climate change in Copenhagen, the lab developed a hybrid bicycle wheel which captures the energy of braking to give riders an extra push.

Biderman’s work focuses on engaging city administrations and industry members worldwide to explore how pressing issues in urbanization are being impacted by a wave of new distributed technologies, and how these can be harnessed to create a more sustainable future living in urban environments.