Hiroshi Ishii

Hiroshi Ishii is the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. He joined the MIT Media Lab in October 1995, and founded the Tangible Media Group. He currently directs the Tangible Media Group, and he co-directs the Things That Think (TTT) consortium. Hiroshi’s research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. His team seeks to change the “painted bits” of GUIs to “tangible bits” by giving physical form to digital information. In 2012, he presented the new vision “Radical Atoms” to take a leap beyond “Tangible Bits” by assuming a hypothetical generation of materials that can change form and appearance dynamically, becoming as reconfigurable as pixels on a screen. Ishii and his team have presented their visions of “Tangible Bits” and “Radical Atoms” at a variety of academic, design, and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, Industrial Design Society of America, AIGA, Ars Electronica, ICC, Centre Pompidou, and Victoria and Albert Museum), emphasizing that the development of tangible interfaces requires the rigor of both scientific and artistic review. For this work, he was awarded tenure from MIT in 2001, and elected to the CHI Academy in 2006 recognizing his substantial contributions to the field of Human-Computer Interactions through the creation of new genre called “Tangible User Interfaces.”

1993 - 1994 Visiting Assistant Professor at the Computer Systems Research Institute of the University of Toronto, Canada / In 1993 and 1994, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Computer Systems Research Institute of the University of Toronto, Canada.
1992 Ph. D. degree in computer engineering / He received B. E. degree in electronic engineering, M. E. and Ph. D. degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980 and 1992, respectively.
1988 - 1994 Leader of a CSCW research group at the NTT Human Interface Laboratories / Prior to MIT, from 1988-1994, he led a CSCW research group at the NTT Human Interface Laboratories, where his team invented TeamWorkStation and ClearBoard.
1980 M. E. degree in computer ingeneering / He received B. E. degree in electronic engineering, M. E. and Ph. D. degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980 and 1992, respectively.
1978 B. E. degree in electronic engineering / He received B. E. degree in electronic engineering, M. E. and Ph. D. degrees in computer engineering from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1978, 1980 and 1992, respectively.
Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab
Founder of the Tangible Media Group / He founded the Tangible Media Group to pursue a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits." His team seeks to change the "painted bits" of GUIs to "tangible bits" by giving physical form to digital information and computation.