Mara Balestrini, Master in Design for Emergent Futures Co-director, is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher and a technology strategist. She is the CEO of Ideas for Change, a think tank and consultancy firm advising cities, businesses and institutions on impact innovation.

She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Fab Lab Barcelona where she coordinates Making Sense, a European project that seeks to empower citizens through personal digital manufacturing applied to the design of environmental sensors; and co-founder of SalusCoop, the first Spanish cooperative for citizens’ health data.

Mara earned a PhD in Computer Science from the Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities (ICRI-Cities) at University College London (UCL). She also holds a BA in Audiovisual Communications and a MSc in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media. She is Senior Faculty at the IAAC and a visiting lecturer at the the Royal College of Art (RCA).

Mara is also member of the UCL Engineering Exchange, advisor at the Open Faculty, contributor to the Sharing Cities Network, and co-organiser of the Ouishare Collaborative Economy Research Network.  She has worked as a video journalist and has been a research assistant at the Group of Interactive Technologies (GTI), at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).

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