Speaker Bios

John Maeda, a world-renowned artist, graphic designer, computer scientist and educator, was inaugurated as the Rhode Island School of Design’s 16th president on September 12, 2008. Maeda’s career reflects his philosophy of humanizing technology.

For more than a decade, he has worked to integrate technology, education and the arts into a 21st-century synthesis of creativity and innovation. Maeda’s early work redefined the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by combining skilled computer programming with sensitivity to traditional artistic concerns.

This work helped to develop the interactive motion graphics that are prevalent on the web today. As a digital artist, Maeda has exhibited in well-received one-man shows in London, New York and Paris. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris.

A former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Maeda taught media arts and sciences there for 12 years and served as associate director of research at the MIT Media Lab.

A native of Seattle, Maeda earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT, followed by a PhD in Design Science from the University of Tsukuba Institute of Art and Design in Japan and an MBA from Arizona State University.

John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He was a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation.

John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.