Tianyu Su
Interests: Urban Technology and Innovation, Data Analytics and Visualization, Data- Driven and Data-Informed Design, Healthy Places and Cities, Technology Ethics, Design Education, Data and Computing Education
Bio: Tianyu Su is a Doctor of Design (DDes) candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, with a concentration in urban and spatial data science. His doctoral study focuses on the potentials and challenges (both analytical and ethical) of using large-scale social media data to understand health-promoting behavior in urban environments. He analyzes more than one million online posts with state-of-the-art machine learning models to mine self-reported health behavior on social media. Then, to understand who and what is invisible in this big data source, i.e., which population group and their activity, he conducts intensive fieldwork to ground-truth the big data-based results and assess the biases and ethical concerns of the big data approach. Through his dissertation, Tianyu aspires to create a heuristic about how to appropriately apply new technology for the betterment of cities and society.
While studying at Harvard, Tianyu founded Place AI, an initiative advocating for and experimenting with responsible practice and strategies in urban technology applications, with a team of urban scholars and technologists. Before joining Harvard, Tianyu received his Master in City Planning from MIT, concentrating on Urban Information Systems and City Design & Development. He also holds a Master of Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.