Benedetta Piantella

Faculty Fellow

A headshot of Benedetta smiling and looking slightly to the right.

Benedetta is a researcher, designer and educator. She has been involved in international development and ICT initiatives for almost two decades since surviving the Tsunami in 2004. She has also been developing curriculum and teaching across different disciplines and to different age groups, ranging from Lego Robotics to PreK-12 students to Physical Computing and Design for Social Impact to undergraduate and graduate students, for almost twenty years. Her design research practice focuses on applying systems thinking and community-based participatory approaches towards social and environmental challenges in partnerships with a wide range of organizations such as large International Organizations (UN & UNICEF), Governments, Universities, NGOs and local Community-based Organizations. She has co-founded a number of R&D companies serving the humanitarian sector and most recently launched Low Pwr Lab at NYU focused on research efforts around climate-resilient, rugged and low-power computing for communities.

Project Description

Through this fellowship the plan is to co-design accessible and free educational experiences focused on exploring infrastructure and environmental awareness in close partnership with New York City community-based organizations (CBOs) in the form of hands-on workshops and experiential interactive learning opportunities to be hosted at partners' sites across the City. Each module will focus on a different topic ranging from food justice, energy transition, network neutrality, citizen science, self publishing and climate storytelling. Each activity will stand on its own as well as build on each other to create a more expansive public pedagogy journey.