Partnerships
Sustained research, design, and pedagogical collaborations across industry, civic, cultural, research, and laboratory partners. Many of these have run through Illinois Tech's IPRO Labs and the Center for Sports Innovation; others through the University of Chicago, the Kaplan Institute, ChiLab Design Studio, and direct industry engagements.
Industry
Commercial firms — architecture, real estate, energy, technology — that have brought specific design and research problems to my work.
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2013–2015
Real-estate developer; commissioned LakeSIM as a tool for evidence-based decision-making on the proposed Chicago Lakeside Development.
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2015–2020
Multi-year IPRO studio sponsor across the Big Data Science and Urban Experience, Public Safety Innovation, and Frontiers in Tech Innovation studios; partner with the Motorola Solutions Foundation on disaster-response analytics and fire-emergency preparedness.
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2013–2015
Architecture firm; design partner on LakeSIM, contributing master-plan tools and the urban-design language the prototype was built to support.
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2021–present
Multi-year industry partner across IPRO Labs and the Center for Sports Innovation; lead collaborator on sporting-equipment R&D, wearable interactive technologies, and immersive media for sport.
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2023
Toy and game design partner on the Big Monster Toys Lab IPRO studio (Spring 2023).
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2013–2015
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Farpoint Development
2018–2019
Real-estate development partner on Burnham Lakefront IPRO studios investigating trucking logistics and people movement at the lakefront site.
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2021
Consulting partner on the Departure Lounge IPRO studio with United Airlines, and on a separate Internship User Experience research engagement.
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2015–2017
Sponsor of the Big Data Science and the Urban Experience IPRO (2015–2017), co-developed with the IIT Institute of Design and the Motorola Solutions Foundation.
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2022
Engineering firm; partner on the Smart City Lab IPRO studio.
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2013–2015
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2022
Industry partner on the Smart City Lab IPRO studio investigating networked urban infrastructure.
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2021
Aviation partner on the Designing the Future of the Departure Lounge IPRO studio (Summer 2021), with Infosys Strategic Consulting Group.
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VR Motion
2022
VR/AR partner on the VR and E-Sports Lab IPRO studio with Wilson Sporting Goods (Fall 2022).
Civic
Public-sector and civic-organization partners on projects with public-interest stakes.
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2017–2019
Multi-year IPRO partner on Big Data Analytics studios investigating preparedness and response to fire emergencies and other disasters, with the Motorola Solutions Foundation.
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2014–present
Civic partner across multiple projects, including delivery of the Imagine Project smart-city innovation district plan to the City of Chicago Development Board.
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Bronzeville Development Association
ongoing
Community development organization on Chicago's South Side; sustained civic-design partner.
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Parkway Ballroom
ongoing
Bronzeville cultural and event venue (Cliff Rome); sustained community partner.
Cultural
Museums, exhibition venues, and cultural foundations that have hosted or commissioned the work.
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2012–present
Science museum partner on the Manifest/Space exhibition (2012, with the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics) and the All-Sky Camera for Astronomical and Light Pollution Monitoring IPRO (Spring 2019).
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2014–2015
Exhibition partner for the City of Big Data series, including the 96-by-96-inch fabric print of Chicago open-data layers and companion projection-mapping work.
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Platform 01, Beppu, Japan
2010–2011
Exhibition venue for (re)ACT, the projection-on-Shoji installation.
Research
Academic institutions and research centers I have worked with on funded research, co-teaching, or methods development.
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2008–present
Co-teaching partner for the Art of Data Visualization course; site of Active Light Cloud and earlier installation work.
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2013–present
Home institution for the Urban Center for Computation and Data (UrbanCCD) and the Computation Institute, where Bo served as Research Fellow (2013–2015) and led LakeSIM. Continued collaborator across urban-computing work, including the Array of Things (NSF Award #1532133).
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2012
University of Chicago research center; co-developer of Manifest/Space, the student-fabricated South Pole Telescope exhibition (2012), with Adler Planetarium and Argonne National Laboratory.
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ongoing
Co-teaching partner on the Art of Data Visualization course.
National laboratories
National laboratories partnering on research at the seam between computation and design practice.
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2010–2015
U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. Site of Bo's pre-faculty appointment as Building Intelligence and Energy Efficiency Specialist (2010–2012), where he was Principal System Architect of the Argonne Energy Management Information System; co-principal investigator on LakeSIM (2013–2015).
Selected additional collaborators
Construction, materials, and risk: LafargeHolcim, DuPont, Zurich Insurance International, Breen Capital Partners. Real estate: Strategic Property Partners, JGMA. Community and cultural: eta Creative Arts Foundation, Hothouse, R.A.G.E. Skatepark, Cook County Assessor's Office, WorldChicago. Consumer goods and hospitality: Disney, Walmart, Kellogg, Smart Ones Foods, Kuma's Corner.
I work with industry, civic, and cultural partners on selected projects through Illinois Tech and independently. For partnership inquiries, contact me at wrodda@illinoistech.edu.