Wonyoung So

Wonyoung So is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studies how urban data and technology have been historically used to orchestrate, predict, and police public life and how the future of urban science can be different if we care more about empowering marginalized groups in the city. His research focuses on the role of contemporary technologies that perpetuate systemic racism and exclusion in housing in the US, with particular interests in rental housing, eviction, and mortgage lending. In 2011, Wonyoung co-founded the crowdfunding platform Tumblbug and demonstrated an alternative to the sustainability of the DIY movement. He was a research fellow at the Senseable City Lab at MIT, and he co-curated Seoul Libre Maps at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism to realize the vision of a citizen-organized data community. He was an MIT Presidential Fellow and works as a research assistant and technical lead of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT. He holds a Master in City Planning at MIT DUSP and a BFA in Visual Communication Design at Kookmin University. His work has been recognized by the Information is Beautiful Awards, MIT Museum, IEEE, Fast Co. Design, The Atlantic, CNN, The Guardian, Seoul Museum of Art, and Wired, among others.