Pedro M. Cruz

Form, metaphor, and data

I explore nature-inspired metaphors to portray data and information by design. I’m an Associate Professor in the Art + Design Department at Northeastern University, where I teach Information Design and Data Visualization. I co-direct the Co-Lab for Data Impact and I’m a core faculty member of the Center for Design.

My work as been featured in venues such as the London Design Biennale, MoMA, CES, the Museum of the City of New York, the Ibero-American Biennale of Design, SIGGRAPH, the IEEE VIS Arts Program, the ALIFE Conference on Artificial Life, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, FACTT Festival of Art & Science, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and in the Information is Beautiful Awards. My work has also been showcased in several popular magazines such as Fast Company, WIRED, National Geographic, the Washington Post, the Atlantic and Business Insider.


Prior to Northeastern, I was a PhD student as the Computational Design and Visualization Lab at University of Coimbra in Portugal, where I earned my PhD in Information Science and Technology. I was also a visiting PhD student at the MIT Senseable City Lab in Cambridge and a research assistant at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. While I was studying, I collaborated regularly with design studio FBA in Coimbra. 

A perfect storm
Climate risk and greenhouse gas emissions