Judith Donath

Judith Donath is a Berkman Faculty Fellow and an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where she directs the Sociable Media Group. Her work focuses on the social side of computing, synthesizing knowledge from fields such as graphic design, urban studies and cognitive science to build innovative interfaces for online communities and virtual identities. She is known internationally for pioneering research in social visualization, interface design, and computer mediated interaction. She created several of the early social applications for the web, including the first postcard service ("The Electric Postcard"), the first interactive juried art show ("Portraits in Cyberspace") and an early large-scale web event ("A Day in the Life of Cyberspace"). Her work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and in several New York galleries; she was the director of "Id/Entity", a collaborative exhibit of installations examining how science and technology are transforming portraiture.

Her current research areas include analyzing and visualizing social networks and online social interactions, understanding identity formation in virtual worlds, and integrating communication technologies with public spaces.  She is writing a book, "Signals, Truth and Design", that uses signaling theory  to understand the dynamics of human communication in both face to face and mediated interaction, and to guide the design of new communication technologies. 

Professor Donath received her doctoral and master's degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT, her bachelor's degree in History from Yale University, and has worked professionally as a designer and builder of educational software and experimental media.