Fabien Girardin

Fabien Girardin is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Digital Communication in the Interactive Technologies Group (Department of Information and Communication Technologies) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. He is also affiliated with the Senseable City Lab (Department of Urban Studies and Planning) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. His current investigation explores the co-evolution of people with ubiquitous technologies in urban environments. More specifically, he studies the multiple aspects of human interaction with location information from the analysis of implicit and explicit user-generated geographic data to the investigation of people practices with location aware systems. Fabien holds an engineering degree in Computer Science from the Biel School of Engineering and Information Technology (University of Applied Sciences Bern), Switzerland and a M.Phil. in Computer Science and Digitial Communication from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. During his studies, he worked in the fields of interoperability and security in distributed systems at Borland Software Corp. in San Mateo, CA, USA. After graduating, he joined TECFA at the University of Geneva to develop collaborative learning environments and later the CRAFT at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies, Lausanne (EPFL) to design, implement, and study location-aware collaborative applications. Subsequently, Fabien co-founded Simpliquity, an EPFL spin-off that offers user experience consultancy in the domain of emerging technologies. [More in LinkedIn].

Selected publications [more]

Girardin, F., Vaccari, A., Gerber, A., Biderman, A., and Ratti, C. (2009). Quantifying urban attractiveness from the distribution and density of digital footprints. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure Research, 4.

Girardin, F., Calabrese, F., Dal Fiore, F. , Ratti, C., and Blat, J. (2008). Digital footprinting: Uncovering tourists with user-generated content. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 7(4):36–43.

Girardin, F., Fiore, F. D., Ratti, C., and Blat, J. (2008). Leveraging explicitly disclosed location information to understand tourist dynamics: A case study. Journal of Location-Based Services 2, 1, 41–54.

Girardin, F. (2007). Bridging the social-technical gap in location-aware computing. In CHI ’07: CHI ’07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, pages 1653–1656, New York, NY, USA. ACM Press.

Girardin, F. and Nova, N. (2006). Getting real with ubiquitous computing: the impact of discrepancies on collaboration. e-Minds International Journal on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(1):60–64.

Selected talks

People + technology + space (slides, video), Design Hub Barcelona session on New Landscapes – Architecture Beyond Leisure, Barcelona, Spain, June 4, 2009.

People as sensors; people as actors (slides), Data City workshop at the World Information City conference, Paris, France, May 31, 2009.

People as sensors; people as actors (slides, video, interview), Workshop on "La Ciudad Híbrida", Sevilla, Spain, May 12, 2009.

People-centric sensing in the city of the near future (slides), Yahoo! Research seminar, Barcelona, Spain, January 22, 2009.

La ville 2.0 existe déjà, on l'a rencontrée (slides), Villes 2.0 & Co, Paris, France, January 8, 2009.

Intégration des technologies et de l'intelligence ambiante dans les environnements urbains (slides), Forum Chronos, Paris, France, November 24, 2008.

From Sentient to Responsive Cities (slides, video), Visualizar Database City workshop at MediaLab Prado, Madrid, Spain, November 3, 2008.

From Sentient to Responsive Cities (slides), Workshop on Intelligent Cities of the Next Generation, Barcelona, Spain, June 26, 2008.

Révéler le pouls de la ville (slides), Salon ‘Immo TIC – Domo TIC AGORA, Sophia Antipolis, France, December 7, 2007.

Mapping of city dynamics (slides), Mobile Monday Barcelona, Spain, December 3, 2007.

The Design of Everyday Pervasive Things (slides), Picnic Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 29, 2007.

Location-Aware Applications in the City (slides), MIT SENSEable City Lab, Boston, USA, May 23, 2007.

Bridging the Social-Technical Gap in Location-Aware Computing (slides), Urban Mapping, San Francisco, USA, April 27, 2007.

Embracing the Real World’s Messiness (slides, video), Lift Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, February 9, 2007.

In the media

Quelle ville voulons-nous offrir ? Quelle ville espérons-nous recevoir ? (web page - pdf), Le Monde, March 6, 2009.

Los taxistas como usuarios avanzandos de la tecnología y de la ciudad: GPS y Wikipedia (web page), ADN, November 6, 2008.

Réduire l'incertain, Révéler le réel-réel (web page), Group Chronos, October 24, 2008.

Conocer la ciudad siguiendo nuestras huellas digitales (web page), Infomania, May, 2008.

Barcelona tourists stick to well-beaten paths (pdf), Catalonia Today, April 3, 2008.

Internet revela los movimientos de los turistas en las ciudades (pdf), El Periodico, March 31, 2008.

Huellas digitales en las ciudades (web page), ADN, March 7, 2008.

Il turista fa clic e si svela (web page), La Repubblica, February 12, 2008.

Interview (video), Nouvo, February 7, 2008.

Les cartographes du téléphone mobile (web page), Le Monde Informatique, September 5, 2007.