March 19, 2018

Designer and technologist to speak at Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — John Maeda, renowned designer and technologist, will speak on Design, AI and Inclusion at Purdue University on March 29.

At the Intersection of Liberal Arts and STEM is free and open to the public, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. It is co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the Purdue Polytechnic Institute.

John Maeda is an American designer, technologist and catalyst behind the national movement to transform STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to STEAM, which adds the arts. Maeda served as the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design where he repositioned the institution to regain its prominence in the new economy. An internationally recognized thought leader at the intersection of design and technology, Maeda serves as Global Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.

Maeda, who released his Design in Tech Report 2018 at SXSW this month, says machine intelligence will change jobs significantly. But it also demands new ways of thinking to make it better.

“The challenge for humanists is to understand technology and to understand its weaknesses,” he said. “We need to retrain computers to have less bias.”

In his role at Automattic, Maeda pushes to expand ways of thinking to incorporate broader perspectives and recognize the benefits possible with an integration of the classic design artist, commercial designer, and computational designer to build more inclusive designs.

At the Intersection of Liberal Arts and STEM is a series of events that highlights how liberal arts, science, technology, engineering and math fields are enriched and have greater capacity for meaningful change when the disciplines intersect. More information about At The Intersection of Liberal Arts and STEM can be found here

Writer: Kelsey Schnieders Lefever, kschnied@purdue.edu

Media contact: Joseph Paul, paul102@purdue.edu

Source: Gabby Hlavek, director of marketing and communications, College of Liberal Arts, ghlavek@purdue.edu

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