Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga is a PhD student in the Design and Computation Group, specializing in computational design and urban computing. He is a researcher at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Previously, he was a research scientist at UC Berkeley, investigating the convergence of design, spatial information, data science, and social sciences. In the past five years, Carlos has been a Co-Instructor at MIT, a Lecturer at UC Berkeley and a Visiting Professor at UNAM, and has taught computational design seminars and workshops in the United States, Italy, China and Mexico, in venues such as ACADIA and Smartgeometry. His work has been supported by numerous fellowships, more recently by the MIT Presidential Fellowship, the IDEA Studio Fellowship at Autodesk, the National Council of Science and Technology, and the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Carlos' research and writings have been published widely in architecture, design and computation, and HCI journals and conference proceedings.

Carlos’ latest research examines the history of computing, its development and application in urban planning tools, and their utilization as artifacts for empirical legitimization of the scientific planning practices during 1960’s. His current work involves the development of alternative urban computing methodologies that are non-deterministic, open-ended, and attempt to represent cities as problems of organized complexity.

Carlos holds a SMArchS in Computation from MIT, where he was awarded the Arthur Rotch Special Prize for the highest academic achievement, excellence in thesis, and contributions to more than one field, a Master of Architecture from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Architecture with distinction from UNAM in Mexico.

2016 SMArchS Thesis: Painting with Data: From a Computational History of Urban Models to an Alternative Urban Computing