How Joseph Paradiso’s sensing innovations bridge the arts, medicine, and ecology

From early motion-sensing platforms to environmental monitoring, the professor and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences has turned decades of cross-disciplinary research into real-world impact.

Joseph Paradiso thinks that the most engaging research questions usually span disciplines. 

Paradiso was trained as a physicist and completed his PhD in experimental high-energy physics at MIT in 1981. His father was a photographer and filmmaker working at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation, so he grew up in a house where artists, scientists, and engineers regularly gathered and interesting music was always playing. 

That mix of influences led him to the MIT Media Lab, where he is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor, academic head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and director of the Responsive Environments research group.

At the Media Lab, Paradiso conducts research that engages sensing of different kinds and applies it across diverse and often extreme applications. He works on developing technologies that can efficiently capture and process multiple sensing modalities, and leverages this capability in application domains like the internet of things, medicine, environmental sensing, space exploration, and artistic expression. These efforts use that information to help people better understand the world, express themselves, and connect with one another.