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Leah Buechley

Assistant Professor, MIT Media Lab; Director, High-Low Tech Research Group
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Leah Buechley is Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group. The High-Low Tech group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives, with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. She is a wellknown expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research was the recipient of a 2011 NSF CAREER award and has been featured in numerous articles in publications including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, and the Taipei Times. She received PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College.

Highlighted project
LivingWall is a sheet of interactive wallpaper that can be programmed to monitor its environment, control lighting and sound, and generally serve as a beautiful and unobtrusive way to enrich environments with computation. The wallpaper is flat and constructed entirely from paper and paint. Magnetic electronic pieces serve as sensors, lamps, network interfaces, and interactive decorations. The paper's pattern was inspired by William Morris' paper and textile prints.

Work environment and institutional setting
Leah is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory that is home to approximately 25 professors from different backgrounds. She currently supervises a team of six graduate students, 2 PhD students and 4 Master's students. They do engineering, HCI, and design research.