Pedro Cruz started his academic activity when he enrolled in Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. He later changed his course to Informatics Engineering at University of Coimbra.
In Coimbra he started collaborating with the communication design atelier FBA, doing motion and interactive installations. He spent a year in Belo Horizonte – Brazil, taking an internship at the creative studio 3bits, working in web and interaction design. He later concluded his master thesis in information visualization and aesthetics in Coimbra.
From 2010 to 2011 he was an invited assistant professor in the Design and Multimedia courses at University of Coimbra while being involved as researcher at CISUC (Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra). Currently he is PhD student at the Doctoral Program for Information Science and Technology of the same university, having passed through Cambridge, MA as a PhD visiting student at MIT Senseable City Lab and a research assistant through SMART (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology) in the framework of the LIVE Singapore! project, in Singapore.
Awards
- ACM SIGGRAPH Student Research competition 2011 semi-finalist with Visualizing the Circulatory Problems of Lisbon, Vancouver 2011.
- Honorable mention with Lisbon’s Blood Vessels – A mapping experiment on the MiniMax Mapping Contest, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 2011.
- Award Seeds of Science Junior 2011, Figueira da Foz 2011.
- First place in the ACM SIGGRAPH Student Research Competition 2010 with Visualizing Empires Decline, Los Angeles 2010.
- Jury selection with Visualizing Empires Decline in SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival (featured at the Electronic Theater), Los Angeles 2010.
Mentions and exhibitions
- Berkowitz, J. “Color Forecast” spies on the hip to help guide your fashion choices. Fast Company’s Co. Create (April 2012).
- Finke, T., Manger, S. and Fitchel, S. Informotion: Animated Infographics. Gestalten Verlag, pp. 162 (2012)
- Traffic in Lisbon in The Art of Networks Exhibition, Foosaner Art Museum, Florida (March 8, 2012)
- Lima, M. Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. Princeton Architectural Press, 2011
- Visualizing Lisbon’s traffic at MoMA’s Talk to Me exhibition, New York, July 24–November 7, 2011 (also featured on the catalogue of the same)
- The Morphing City in Enter 5: Datapolis, international art sci tech biennale, Prague. April 14–17, 2011 (also featured on the catalogue of the same)
- London’s traffic visualization for Wired Magazine UK 12/2010
- Cover and article at Audi A1 Magazine 05/2010
- Exhibition Mediateca Expandida: HABITAR, Gíjon, Spain 2010 (also featured on the catalogue of the same)
- Two works on VisualComplexity.com — Lisbon’s traffic and Sync/Lost
- Work featured on the MIT Portugal webpage
- Interview for Masters of Media, University of Amsterdam
- information aesthetics
- FlowingData
- datavisualization.ch
- Brownian motion at Creative Applications
- The Huffington Post
- boingboing
Communications
- Information visualization: expressiveness and accuracy. Invited class talk at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Cambridge MA, 11 November 2011, Cambridge.
- Invited work presentation session for The Human Interface Device Prototyping group at Apple Inc., April 2011, Cupertino CA.
- International colloquium: Image in Science and Art — Visualization of complexity session. 18 February 2011, Lisbon.
Publications
For now, only a short preview is available at the webpage of my research center.