Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow with the Program for Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2008-2009 he served as a Visionary Fellow with the Jerusalem 2050 project sponsored by the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for International Studies at MIT, conducting research on urban renewal and social empowerment through the media arts in divided cities.
Nitin received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from MIT, as well as M.S. and B.E. degrees from Georgia Tech. He previously conducted research at the MIT Media Lab on open design collaboration, mobile and wearable computing, speech interfaces and auditory perception. He previously co-founded Akaza Research, a technology startup focused on open source software for public biomedical research, and worked at Cytel, Inc. as Director, Commercialization of Research on product development for BioPharma.
Nitin’s current focus is on creative empowerment of marginalized youth through participatory new media technologies and programs. Since 2006 Nitin co-founded Voices Beyond Walls, a nonprofit initiative, to conduct digital video and storytelling workshops with children and youth in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. Over the past 4 years, the program has been conducted in over 7 refugee camps with nearly 60 video shorts produced; the program will be launched in Gaza in summer 2010.
Nitin also co-founded the Boston Palestine Film Festival co-sponsored with the Museum of Fine Arts since 2007, to showcase Palestinian Cinema to mainstream American audiences and support emerging Palestinian filmmakers. Nitin was born in New Delhi, India and lived in the Middle East for over 12 years.
