Since the Greek agora, cities have brought us together. They serve as catalysts for innovation, societal
advancement, and resilience. Despite living in a digital era, being physically together in shared spaces
fosters the moderation needed to navigate differences and forge alliances. Cities are also where humans
and non-human beings, human-made and natural spaces interact. By embracing this rich diversity we can find
solutions to both human and planetary issues.
As part of the Forum of Future Cities series, this roundtable on Future Cities brings together
renowned experts from different domains and from Senseable City Lab’s global research laboratories, from
Amsterdam to Rio to Dubai, to share ideas
and experiences.
Cities foster a key human attribute: being social. University campuses are simultaneously hotbeds of academic innovation and microcosms of global conflict; next door, entrepreneurs, grassroots groups, and creative thinkers gather to launch small businesses, start-ups, and community initiatives. There is power in proximity: through sharing space and exchanging ideas and sentiments, we can become a collective engine of transformation.
Humans interact with other organic life in cities. The coexistence of humans, insects, trees, and microorganisms contributes to urban biodiversity. The balance between human-made and nature can help us to mitigate climate change. Exploring the symbiotic relationships between humans and nonhuman beings promotes healthier, harmonious cities.
Understanding how populations and individuals move within urban areas helps us address spatial segregation in cities—spatial segregation undermines coexistence. Big data and urban science methods can help us to study the dynamics of neighborhood-level movement, social mixing, community building, and the role of co-location in fostering inclusive and accessible urban environments.
Cities are part of a global network, and solutions to local problems often have global implications. How do we implement local solutions globally, transfer knowledge between cities, and use local challenges as testing grounds for scalable solutions? Innovation across borders can create resilient and sustainable urban environments.
Come to our Lab for experiencing and discovering our ongoing research projects. Join interactive sessions with our researchers, and demo our sensing and hardware technology.
We welcome our consortium members for day 2 of the forum. SCL researchers will be available to demo some of their projects.
The session will focus on strategies for creating an inventory trees' location together with morphological and physiological attributes using low-cost and opportunistic strategies.
The session will showcase how large scale human mobility data can be used to gain a deeper understanding of human mobility and behavioral patterns, and how they can affect sustainable urban development.
The session will discuss what factors can impact on people's wellbeing in urban scenarios and will present ways to quantitavely measure urban wellbeing.
This session will reflect on how cities can evolve to support biodiversity while meeting human needs, from managing green spaces to navigating human-wildlife interactions and the impact of built environment.
Professor, MIT
+Director of the MIT Initiative on Digital Economy and Founding Partner at Milemark Capital & Manifest Capital, Aral’s work has been featured in Science, Forbes, and The Washington Post. Aral's book "The Hype Machine" discusses how social media affects our decision-making.
Co-Founder, SCL
+A technology inventor, author, and entrepreneur, Biderman is the co-founder of the MIT Senseable City Lab. Biderman also co-founded and was the CEO of Superpedestrian, a robotics company that focused on the future of personal urban mobility, which received multiple awards including the Time Magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2014.
Professor and Head of Architecture, MIT
+Nicholas de Monchaux is Weber-Shaughness Professor and Head of Architecture at MIT, as well as a partner in the architecture practice modem.
Associate Director, SCL
+Associate Director, Research & Design, at the MIT Senseable City Lab, and a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Duarte’s most recent book is “Urban play: make-believe, technology and space (MIT Press, 2021).
Associate Professor, Harvard
+Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Doherty is the author of “Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State”, and co-editor of “Ecological Urbanism.
Associate Professor, MIT
+Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan, and affiliate of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems & Society, Eckles's research on complex modeling and inference with online rating data won the Amazon Research Award.
Director, Office of Green Infrastructure, City of Boston
+Kate’s background is in engineering, landscape architecture & policy - she was appointed by Mayor Wu to facilitate widespread green infrastructure implementation.
Research Manager and Partnerships Lead, SCL
+Fugiglando leads the Lab’s global research development, managing multi-stakeholder research projects on data science applied to urban technology. Fugiglando is the co-founder of ReFuse, a social enterprise based in Lebanon working to improve the well-being of communities exposed to waste hazards.
President & Co-Founder, Biobot
+Newsha Ghaeli is cofounder of Biobot Analytics, a venture-backed company and the first to bring wastewater epidemiology to market.
Reader in Experimental Ecology, Imperial College London
+Associate Professor at Imperial College London, Gill studies insect responses to environmental stressors. Gill's research on novel insect monitoring tools has been published in Nature, the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Professor of Psychology, Brigham Young
+Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, Holt-Lunstad research has been seminal in the recognition of social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for early mortality.
Professor of Psychology, Tufts
+Dr. Maddox is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Tufts University Social Cognition (TUSC) Lab, which examines social cognitive aspects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, SCL
+Mazzarello is a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at MIT Senseable City Lab, and focuses on the Lab’s global research. With a PhD in Spatial Design from Politecnico di Milano, Mazzarello’s articles have been published in Nature Computational Science, Nature Water—for which her visualizations were also selected as the cover.
Research Scientist, SCL
+Mora is Research Scientist at the MIT Senseable City Lab, where he leads research on novel sensing technologies and their applications for future cities. Mora holds a PhD degree from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and has been a visiting scholar at City London University.
Professor of Network Science, Northeastern
+Esteban Moro is a full professor and director of the Social Urban Networks (SUN) group at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University and affiliated faculty at the MIT Media Lab.
Director, SCL
+Co-founder and Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, Ratti is a Professor at MIT and at the Politecnico di Milano. With a PhD in architecture from the University of Cambridge, UK, Ratti holds numerous patents and has co-authored over 1000 academic and general media publications, including articles for the BBC, La Stampa, and The New York Times. Ratti is the curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.
Principal Planner
+Jeffrey is a Senior Planner and professional engineer who works at the intersection of transportation, land use, and public policy. His professional experience in government, consulting, non-profit, and academic spheres has conferred expertise in disciplines such as street design and traffic engineering, transit planning, and transportation policies at the municipal and state level.
Principal Research Scientist, SCL
+Principal Research Scientist at MIT Senseable City Lab, and a Senior Researcher at the Istituto di Informatica e Telematica, CNR, Pisa, Santi has been recognized as Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery. His research is on the modeling and analysis of complex systems, and he has contributed to more than 120 scientific papers.
Behavioral Data Scientist, John Hancock
+Dr. Sadegh Sabouri, formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, is a Behavioral Data Scientist at John Hancock, specializing in land use and transportation planning.
Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
+An urban wildlife ecologist, studying interactions between people and nature in cities around the United States, Paige Warren is a professor and Department Head, Environmental Conservation at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Associate Professor of Transportation, MIT
+Wu is an Associate Professor at MIT focused on decarbonization of transportation. Recipient of a NSF Career Award, Wu works at the intersection of machine learning, optimization, and large-scale urban systems.
Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, AMS Institute, City of Amsterdam, City of Rio de Janeiro, City of Stockholm, Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricultura ed Economia Agraria, Dubai Future Foundation, FAE Technology, Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Regione Emilia-Romagna, KACST, KAIST Center for Advanced Urban Systems, Kyoto University, Sidara, UnipolTech, Tele2, US Department of Transport, Volkswagen Group of America, Toyota Woven City