ABOUT
Dr. Sara Colombo is an Assistant Professor of Designing Responsible AI at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. She is director of the Feminist Generative AI Lab at TU Delft.
Her academic work investigates novel approaches, methodologies, and tools to design fair and ethical AI systems, empower individuals through AI, and shape AI futures through public engagement. Her research aims to merge data feminism and design futuring approaches to explore new ways to co-create more inclusive and just AI futures.
Before joining TU Delft, Sara was an assistant professor at TU Eindhoven (Netherlands), a Research Scientist at the Center for Design, Northeastern University (Boston, USA), and previously a Senior Research Associate, Project Lead, and Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Design Lab.
She believes in the ability of design to envision future worlds and to inspire a more just and ethical development of technology for society.
BIO
Sara holds a MS in design&engineering and a PhD cum laude in Design from Politecnico di Milano. She spent part of her doctoral studies at the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT (Sweden), and worked as a postdoc and adjunct professor at Politecnico di Milano after obtaining her PhD.
In 2016, Sara joined the MIT Design Lab, where she adopted design fiction to envision future solutions based on cutting-edge technologies, especially data and AI, and focused on human experiences. She led teams of designers, computer scientists, and engineers in designing and prototyping connected ecosystems of digital/physical solutions. She made use of rapid prototyping, 3D printing technologies, and video storytelling to generate and communicate proof of concepts of the future realities she designed.
In 2020, Sara worked as a Research Scientist at Northeastern University, where she founded and led Design for Emergency, a project involving 12 countries that adopted AI to analyse people’s conditions and emotions at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, to address them through design solutions.
Her recent academic work delves into designing ethical AI systems and co-envisioning AI futures, particularly in the domains of health and digital wellbeing. She develops knowledge and tools to anticipate and assess the impact of AI on individuals and society, to co-design fair and inclusive AI applications.
Sara has disseminated her research across various publications such as journal articles, conference papers, and books. She chaired the DeSForM (Design and Semantics of Form and Movement) conference at MIT in 2019, as well as multiple tracks at international conferences. She has been a reviewer for numerous scientific conferences and journals in the UX design and HCI domains, and has served as an associate chair or board member for ACM conferences (e.g., TEI, DIS, Mobile HCI). She has been a project reviewer for NIH (National Institute of Health, USA).
She obtained research grants in both the US and Europe, and led numerous research projects, with a focus on AI for health and digital wellbeing. She is an Affiliated Researcher at the Center for Design, Northeastern University, and an Associate Member of the Chaire Diament on Design for e-Mental Health, Université du Québec à Montréal.
Before joining TU Delft in 2023, Sara had been teaching human-centered AI, UX, and interaction design at TU Eindhoven, MIT (CMS/W), and Politecnico di Milano. She has regularly been invited as a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano since 2019.
Sara holds three patents on interactive devices for health and wellbeing, which are based on her research on intelligent digital devices. She has multiple years of experience collaborating with industry on research, education, and as a professional advisor.
Her work has been showcased at venues such as the Design Museum in London (2021), the Design Museum in Den Bosch (2022), Sejong Center in Seul (2023), Ars Electronica (2020), Lille World Design Capital (2020), Rome Maker Faire (2017), and Dutch Design Week (2021, 2022).
In 2024, Sara has co-founded the Feminist Generative AI Lab, a joint research lab with Erasmus University Rotterdam and TU Delft, where she leads multidisciplinary research efforts aimed at cultivating inclusive and equitable AI practices through a feminist AI lens.