A blonde blue eyed woman wearing a lilac sweater in front of a blur background

Hello!

I am an Industry Associate Professor in the Technology, Culture & Society Department at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where I teach in the Integrated Design & Media Program. As a designer, researcher, and humanitarian technologist, my work bridges sustainable design, environmental media, community-owned infrastructure, and resilience-focused STEAM pedagogy.
My path into this work began after surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, when I helped organize grassroots relief efforts in Sri Lanka. Since then, I have dedicated my career to designing and teaching technologies for social impact and environmental resilience. Over the past two decades, I’ve collaborated with the United Nations, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, local governments, NGOs, and community-based organizations across East Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the U.S. to co-design, prototype, and deploy community-driven infrastructure projects. 
I combine systemic thinking, participatory design, and fieldwork to imagine more equitable futures through low-tech, open-source, and renewable-powered systems. Bridging research and creative practice, my work has been shared internationally across HCI, STS, design research, and media art communities, from academic conferences like ACM CHI, CSCW, 4S, EASST, ISLS, and AERA to artistic and cultural venues such as Ars Electronica, Mozilla Festival, Eyebeam, and Rhizome.

Making

  • A work space with a window, white tables and black chairs and electronic materials.

    LOW PWR LAB

    A research lab focused on climate-resilient, rugged and low-power computing for community-owned infrastructure.

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  • A black and white brainstorming card deck

    RESILIENCE CARD DECK

    A brainstorming card deck designed to help generate ideas for a resilience-forward and sustainability-focused curriculum.

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  • Diagram illustrating a solar-powered network protocol with concentric circles and color-coded segments representing solar activity and server activity, alongside a sidebar with server stats and a black and white photo of solar panels.

    SOLAR PROTOCOL

    An experimental network of solar-powered servers distributed across the globe and stewarded by volunteers.

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  • A solar powered table top device with a light indicator

    GIGA NODE

    A block-chain based, solar powered design object that logs, shares and visualizes the level of connectivity experienced by schools.

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  • A Riso printed zine

    SOLAR MEDIA ZINE

    A Riso-printed zine about building your own solar-powered website and sharing it online.

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  • A white column with buttons and displays

    QUENCH KIOSK

    A pay-as-you-go kiosk for improved water management and 24/7 access to safe drinking water.

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  • FAREVALUE

    An enhanced stored-value smart card prototype with an integrated e-paper display that shows real-time fare & balance information.

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  • Electronic components and a printed circuit board on a wooden surface.

    LION TRACKING COLLARS

    Open source wildlife tracking collar system to help conservationists protect lions living in the wild in Southern Kenya.

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  • A white handheld electronic device with a keyboard a blue screen and buttons

    DIAGNOSTIC DEVICE

    A prototype of an accessible and portable networked device to collect accurate health data in real time from rural health facilities.

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Teaching

  • A small electronic circuit displaying poems inspired by Nature

    Sensory Ecology: Data, Networks, and the Biological World

    Class Site
  • A hand holding a home made zine about community gardens with hand drawn cover

    Engineering Resilience: Community Technologies & Infrastructures of Care

    Class Site
  • A series of manipulatives for learning electronics

    Tangible Electronics for Teaching & Learning

    Class Site
  • Two hands moving game pieces on a map of NY State

    UN-chained: Assessing emerging technologies for social good

    Class Site
  • kids building electronic circuits outdoors

    Art, Science & Technology Workshops in Public Spaces

    Find Me in the Garden

Exhibitions

mudac - Museum of Contemporary Design & Applied Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland

Soleil·s: Solar Biennale 2

2025

Museum Giersch der Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany

Fixing Futures

2025

Natural Cycles

2024

RHIZOME, New York, US

Tools For Change

2024

HeK - House of Electronic Arts, Basel, Switzerland

Panke Gallery, Berlin, Germany

Alt Nets

2024

Ars Electronica Festival

2024

Linz, Austria

Renaissance 3.0

2023

ZKM - Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

Publications

Piantella, B., Anjum, S. N., Lunia, A., Nathanson, A., Brain, T., & DesPortes, K. (2025). Harvesting light, cultivating care: Exploring intermittence as framework for infrastructuring and stewardship. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(CSCW7), Article CSCW229, 31 pages. Link

Piantella, B., Nathanson, A., Brain, T., & DesPortes, K. (2023). Listening for the ‘I’in infrastructure (and community) repair. Journal of Environmental Media, 4(1), 101-106. Link

Johnson, M. J., Piantella, B., Lowy, R., Leonard, E., Ryan, N., DiSalvo, B., & DesPortes, K. (2022). Static and Changing Roles in Transdisciplinary Co-Design. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2022, pp. 2204-2205. International Society of the Learning Sciences. Link

Brain, T., Nathanson, A., & Piantella, B. (2022, June). Solar protocol: Exploring energy-centered design. In Eighth Workshop on Computing within Limits 2022. LIMITS. Link

Piantella, B., Nathanson, A., Brain, T., & Ohshiro, K. (2020, April). Solar-powered server: Designing for a more energy positive internet. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-4). Link

Sterling, M. R., Dell, N., Piantella, B., Cho, J., Kaur, H., Tseng, E., ... & Kern, L. M. (2020). Understanding the workflow of home health care for patients with heart failure: challenges and opportunities. Journal of general internal medicine, 35(6), 1721-1729. Link

Sterling, M. R., Dell, N., Tseng, E., Okeke, F., Cho, J., Piantella, B., & Tobin, J. N. (2020). Home care workers caring for adults with heart failure need better access to training and technology: A role for implementation science. Journal of clinical and translational science, 4(3), 224-228. Link

Piantella, B., Tal, D., & Naaman, M. (2018, October). Visualink: A minimal & nonintrusive system for distributed awareness. In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 41-44). Link