Józef Paradiso believes that the most engaging research questions typically span disciplines.
Paradiso trained in physics and received his PhD in experimental high-energy physics from MIT in 1981. His father was a photographer and filmmaker working at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and MITRE Corporation, so he grew up in a home where artists, scientists, and engineers met regularly and where fascinating music was always playing.
This mix of influences led him to the MIT Media Lab, where he is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor, academic chair of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences and director Responsive Environments Research Group.
In the Media Lab, Paradiso conducts research using various types of sensors and applying them in various, often extreme applications. It works to develop technologies that can effectively capture and process multiple sensing modalities, and leverages this capability in application domains such as the Internet of Things, medicine, environmental sensing, space exploration, and artistic expression. These efforts utilize this information to support people better understand the world, express themselves, and connect with each other.
Joe Paradiso reflects on a life full of music, physics and the senses.
Video: MIT Multimedia Lab
Early in his career, Paradiso was a pioneer in the field of wireless wearable sensors. He built many systems with many built-in sensors that could send information from the human body in real time. One of his early flagship projects in this field was a pair of shoes released in 1997 for real-time assisted dance performances, which housed 16 sensors in each shoe, allowing the wearers’ movements to directly generate music through algorithmic mapping. Paradiso’s research at the Media Lab consistently focuses on discovering and using this information in fresh ways.
“When I replaced all the sensors… people would laugh. But now my watch measures most of these things,” Paradiso notes. “The world moved.”
This progression from early prototypes to everyday technology helped lay the foundation for the devices that people now regularly utilize to monitor activity, health and performance.
As detection systems improved, Paradiso expanded its work from individuals to groups. He developed platforms that allowed dance groups to create music together through collective movement. Achieving this required Paradiso and his team to develop fresh ways for compact wearable devices to communicate wirelessly at high speeds, as well as fresh approaches to real-time data processing and expanding the range of available microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors.
The same sensor platforms were later adapted for sports medicine in 2006. Working with physicians supporting elite athletes, its suite of compact, wearable sensors captured huge amounts of rapid movement data from multiple points on the body to support clinicians assess injury risk, performance and recovery anywhere, without the complicated equipment typically associated with biomechanical monitoring and clinical settings.
More recently, Paradiso’s research has expanded beyond humans. Thanks to cooperation with National Geographic Explorers, his team carried out the implementation sensors in remote environments to study animal behavior, including compact, low-power portable devices to detect and track environmental conditions around an animal (currently on lions and hyenas in Botswana and goats in Chile) and acoustic sensors with built-in artificial intelligence to detect and monitor populations of endangered honeybees in Patagonia. This work provides fresh ways to understand how ecosystems function and how the planet is changing.
It was paradise appointed member of the IEEE in January, recognizing its achievements in wearable wireless sensors and mobile energy harvesting. This is the highest level of membership in the IEEE, the world’s leading professional association dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
In the fields of art, health, and the natural world, Paradiso’s work reflects how basic research at MIT can result in technologies that will spread over time, shaping fresh applications and opening fresh fields. As advances in wearable technology drive the rush towards an increasingly connected human being, an ongoing existential question lurks.
“Where do I stop and where do others start?” – asks Paradiso.
For him, the goal is not novelty per se, but empowerment: using technology to support people become more observant, better connected, and more aware of their place in a larger system.