On June 16, Professor Kent Larson, Director of the City Science Group, and Dr. Luis Alberto Alonso Pastor from the MIT Media Lab visited SUES and delivered an academic lecture titled Design and Innovation for Change: MIT Media Lab's Anti-Disciplinary Approach. President Lou Yongqi attended the lecture, joined by faculty and students from across the university. The event drew an enthusiastic turnout.
President Lou extended a warm welcome to Professor Larson and his team. He spoke highly of Larson and the City Science Group's outstanding contributions in smart cities, future communities, digital infrastructure, and sustainable urban development. Lou noted that the MIT Media Lab's mission of creating the future, along with its innovation practice of driving deep integration of technology, humanities, and society through an anti-disciplinary philosophy, aligns closely with SUES' goal of building a world-class applied innovative university. He emphasized that both institutions share a common commitment to addressing real-world problems and breaking down disciplinary barriers for collaborative innovation.
During the lecture, Professor Larson systematically explained the Media Lab's well-known Anti-disciplinary philosophy. He clarified that Anti-disciplinary is not simply Interdisciplinary, it aims to fundamentally transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries by deeply intertwining design, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and other fields to construct entirely new research paradigms around complex real-world problems. Drawing on the lab's long-term practice, Larson shared ten anti-disciplinary pathways, including research on complex human behavior perception and consensus decision-making modeling, offering the audience cutting-edge reflections on innovation methodology. Dr. Alonso then presented the group's National-Scale Living Lab project in Andorra as a case study, illustrating how the team applied data science, spatial analysis, and AI to systematically model and optimize Andorra's tourism, commerce, transportation, and energy systems in support of national transformation. This case sparked strong interest and lively discussion among the audience regarding urban science theory and its practical applications.
At a faculty roundtable following the lecture, President Lou further elaborated on SUES' SPINOVATION concept—a 3-wing fusion of Engineering × Management × Design—and its organic resonance with the MIT Media Lab's innovation philosophy. He introduced SUES' approach of treating Shanghai's urban space as the university's real campus, emphasizing that university innovation should be deeply embedded in the city's innovation network, and explored potential directions for deeper collaboration. Representatives from the International Office and School of Design (preparatory) then engaged the guests in discussions on innovative teaching models, urban data platform development, and design-driven innovation.
During the visit, Professor Larson and his team toured SUES' laboratories, gaining a deeper understanding of the university's distinctive strengths and capabilities.
This visit by MIT Media Lab professors marks an important step for SUES in expanding its high-level international academic network and deepening interdisciplinary innovation dialogue. It not only gave faculty and students a close-up view of the anti-disciplinary research culture of a world-leading innovation institution, but also signals that SUES' discipline development, anchored in its 3-wing philosophy, is actively benchmarking against international excellence and integrating into the global innovation frontier. The preliminary cooperation consensus reached by both sides is expected to inject new international momentum into SUES and add a strong global partner to its pursuit of becoming a world-class applied innovative university.
