We are excited to announce the appointment of Professor Eric Paulos as the new Faculty Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation (effective 1 July 2023).
Throughout his career, Professor Paulos has demonstrated tremendous leadership in this important, emerging area of design innovation – serving as a Founding Faculty Director of the CITRIS Invention Lab, Associate Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, and as the Founding Director of the recently and successfully launched Master of Design (MDes) program – a UC systemwide first. From developing curricula for undergraduate and graduate programs in design, as well as co-curricular and outreach programs, he has excelled at advancing the Jacobs Institute’s unique approach to education and its potential impact on science, society, individuals, and design innovation. His appointment as the new Faculty Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation brings together a wealth of experience across academic, research, and interdisciplinary design excellence.
As a Professor in EECS and also the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), his research interests have spanned a wide range of domains, including critical making, decomposable electronics, urban computing, sustainability, social telepresence, robotics, citizen science, physical computing, interaction design, wearables, smart tools, persuasive technologies, and intimate media. Professor Paulos’ work is hybrid in nature — frequently crossing multiple disciplines, materials, and methodologies, and often striving to creatively and fluidly collage elements of the familiar with the unexpected, the political with the playful, the activist with the consumer, and the expert with the amateur. In a statement about his new role, Professor Paulos expressed his enthusiasm:
“The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation embodies the values and skills I believe our future demands — from broadening diversity and working collaboratively to fluently and confidently engaging creatively across a broad spectrum of emerging technologies, to promoting radical, successful new pedagogies, and finally to enabling the advancement of the engineering and design research frontier to support the needs and values of people and planet.”
Please join us in congratulating Professor Eric Paulos as the new Faculty Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation!