Assaf Biderman
MIT, Associate Director
Assaf Biderman teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Associate Director of the SENSEable City Laboratory, an MIT research group that explores the "real-time city" by studying the increasing deployment of sensors and networked hand-held
electronics, and their relationship to the built environment.
Biderman has backgrounds in physics and human-computer interaction. He focuses on working in partnership with city administrations and industry members worldwide to explore how distributed technologies can be used to improve our understanding of cities and create a more sustainable future.
Recently, the group mapped the real-time movement of thousands of trash items in Seattle, Washington. Community members in the city were given active location tags, which they attached to their waste prior to disposal. This data was then mapped in real-time to reveal the flows of trash. During the 2009 UN Summit on Climate change, the group revealed the Copenhagen Wheel - a hybrid bicycle wheel with environmental sensors and real-time communication for the City of Copenhagen.
