About Dr. Salamanca
Bio
Dr. Salamanca’s research lies at the intersection of design, social science, and informatics. His current research at the Design for Social Viscosity Lab at the University of Illinois is twofold. One strand investigates the social and material conditions necessary to facilitate or hinder cooperation and collaboration in collective practices such as urban commuting. His recent publications discuss the concept of social viscosity and introduce the use of agent-based modeling as a tool for studying it. His subsidiary line of research explores the visual analysis of large datasets for achieving unplanned collective goals in adaptive contexts such as smart cities.
Dr. Salamanca is an Affiliate Professor in the Informatics Program of the School of Information Sciences, the Siebel Center for Design, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois. He holds a Ph.D. from the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, USA; an MDes in Design Direction from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy; and a BA in Industrial Design from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia.
Ongoing Projects
Design for Social Viscosity lab
- Social computing interactions in unstructured social groups
- Swarm intelligence for collaborative urban cycling
- Trust mediation
- Coalescing Currents: multidisciplinary innovation at Illinois. Large Augmented Reality mural for the Siebel Center for Design
- The Firefly and Serenity Experimental Timeline. Interactive prototype
- Visual analysis of financial communities. Big data and analytics project for Bancolombia, the first private bank in Colombia. See the GitHub repository
Education
- Ph.D. in Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design in Chicago, USA
- MDes in Design Direction from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy
- BFA in Industrial Design from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia.
Teaching and advising
Classes taught
Fall 2022
- ARTD 318 Interaction Design: This studio explores the construction of compelling user experiences that incorporate the use of digital media. Students investigate both the theoretical and practical aspects of digital interaction through exercises involving information architecture, interface design, and creative coding.
Spring 2023
- ARTD 218 Intro to Interaction Design: This 16-week endeavor will immerse students in a series of assignments designed to help them develop and cultivate their base of knowledge and fundamental understandings of front-end development and how to structure interactive systems.
- ARTD 499 Creative Coding This course will focus on the foundational concepts and skills of programming through simple design challenges, including bitmap manipulation and gesture-based interactions. At the end of this eight-week class, students will be able to code compelling digital canvases for desktop and mobile devices. The course will make extensive use of popular programming environments such as Processing and P5.js, and might include physical interaction using Arduino depending on the experience and interest of students.