
Professor of Design and Public Policy
College of Arts, Media and Design
Dietmar Offenhuber’s research focuses on the relationship between design, technology, and governance. He is the author of the award-winning monograph “Waste is Information” (MIT Press) and has published books on urban data and accountability technologies. His new book “Autographic Design – the Matter of Data in a Self-inscribing World” (MIT Press) examines material visualization practices and the production of evidence.
2023 Finalist / Winner, Breakthrough of the year Art & Science, Falling Walls Foundation Fellow, Ars Electronica Founding Lab, Institute of Digital Sciences Austria / IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria, Linz
Honorable mention, 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2020 Best Paper Award for IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE CG&A Journal
2019 Princeton-Mellon Fellowship, Princeton University,
Beryl Radin Award (Honorable Mention) for the Best Article in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART)
2017 Austrian Scientists in North America (ASciNA) Award 2017
Dietmar Offenhuber. Autographic Design – The Matter of Data in a Self-inscribing World. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023.
Dietmar Offenhuber. Waste Is Information: Infrastructure Legibility and Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017.
Dietmar Offenhuber. “Shapes and Frictions of Synthetic Data”. In: Big Data & Society 11.2 (June 1, 2024), p. 20539517241249390.
Dietmar Offenhuber and Joy Mountford. “Reconsidering Representation in College Design Curricula”. In: She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation.
The Future of Design Education: Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century 9.2 (June 1, 2023), pp. 264–282.
D. Offenhuber. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Data Physicality”. In: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 40.6 (Nov. 2020), pp. 25–37.
(Best paper award 2020 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Journal)
Dietmar Offenhuber, Laura J Perovich, and Bernice Rogowitz. “Data at Hand – Exploring the Tactile Perception of Data Physicalizations”. en. In: Proceedingsof the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Osaka, JP: ACM, Apr. 2025.
Laura Perovich, Bernice Rogowitz, Victoria Crabb, Jack Vogelsang, Sara Hartleben, and Dietmar Offenhuber. “The Tactile Dimension: A Method for Physicalizing Touch Behaviors”. In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2023). (honorable mention CHI 2023)
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Education
PhD, 2013, Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Diplom-Ingenieur of Architecture, Vienna University of Technology
MSc in Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Contact
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Address
311 Ryder
360 Huntington Avenue,
Boston, MA 02115 -
Office Hours
http://dietmar.youcanbook.me