Profile
Harpreet is an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design. His research is situated at the intersection of Material Science, Biology, and Electronics, drawing on the complementary abilities of the biological and artificial worlds. He terms this as 'Convergent Design' and creates cutting-edge bionic materials and hybrid substrates that lend themselves to future ecological machinery, sensing systems, and interaction design. Harpreet earned a graduate degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab and has previously lived and worked in Austria, India, Japan, Paris, Singapore, and the USA. He is currently an Honorary Fellow at the Berggruen Institute (Los Angeles) and an INK Fellow (India), collaborating with intellectuals across cultural and political boundaries.
Harpreet's experience spans corporate research wings, studios, museums, and academic centers. He has previously worked at Google Creative Lab, Microsoft Research, MIT Media Lab, Ars Electronica Museum, National University of Singapore, Keio University, Telecom Paris, The University of Tokyo, and more. He has previously been named an MIT Technology Review Under 35 Innovator and has received awards including CHI Golden Mouse, Edison Gold, SXSW Interactive Innovation, Fast Company World Changing Ideas, among other accolades. His academic work has been published in peer-reviewed conferences like CHI, DIS, TEI, IEEE VR, and other human-computer interaction venues. Harpreet's artwork has been showcased at Ars Electronica Festival, Somerset House, CID Grand Hornu, Garden Museum (Somerset, UK), Tower Hill Botanic Gardens, MIT Museum, among several other venues. He serves as an advisor to venture-backed start-ups developing technologies for plant science and has also been solicited for advice by government offices, including the Abu Dhabi Executive Office. He has been invited to TEDx venues, INK Talks, and regularly lectures internationally at universities and innovation centers.
Degrees Held
PhD, Information Studies, 2021-2024
The University of Tokyo
S.M, Media Arts and Sciences, 2015-2017
MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Recent Publications
Harpreet Sareen, Lauria Clarke, and Yasuaki Kakehi. 2023. Neither Here Nor There: Botanical (mis)Communication. In Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Creativity and Cognition (C&C '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 288–292. https://doi.org/10.1145/3591196.3596828
Keijiroh Nagano, Maya Georgieva, Harpreet Sareen, and Clarinda Mac Low. 2023. The Talk: Speculative Conversation with Everyday Objects. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Posters (SIGGRAPH '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 12, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3588028.3603643
Sareen, Harpreet, Yasuaki Kakehi, Pattie Maes and Joseph Jacobson. " Heliobots: Stem-Based Robots on Helianthus annuus for Directed Morphological Growth" In Human Centric: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA) 2023. Mar 18-24 2023. pp 291-300; https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.caadria.2023.2.291
Harpreet Sareen, Yibo Fu, Yasuaki Kakehi. “ephemera: Bubble Representations as Metaphors for Endangered Species”. Proceedings of the ISEA 2023: 28th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Paris, May 15-22 2023.
Harpreet Sareen, Yibo Fu, Nour Boulahcen, and Yasuaki Kakehi. 2023. BubbleTex: Designing Heterogenous Wettable Areas for Carbonation Bubble Patterns on Surfaces. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 421, 1–15.
Harpreet Sareen, Yasuaki Kakehi; Plantae Agrestis: Distributed, Self-Organizing Cybernetic Plants in a Botanical Conservatory. Leonardo 2023; 56 (1): 41–42.
Harpreet Sareen, Franziska Mack, Yasuaki Kakehi. “Algaphon: Transducing Human Input to Photosynthetic Radiation Parameters in Algae Timescale”. Proceedings of the ISEA2022: 27th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Barcelona, June 6-16 2022.
Ran Zhou, Zachary Schwemler, Akshay Baweja, Harpreet Sareen, Casey Lee Hunt, and Daniel Leithinger. 2023. TactorBots: A Haptic Design Toolkit for Out-of-lab Exploration of Emotional Robotic Touch. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 370, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580799
Ran Zhou, Zachary Schwemler, Akshay Baweja, Harpreet Sareen, Casey Lee Hunt, and Daniel Leithinger. 2023. Demonstrating TactorBots: A Haptic Design Toolkit for Exploration of Emotional Robotic Touch. Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 438, 1–5.
Rebecca Kleinberger, Megha Vemuri, Janelle Sands, Harpreet Sareen, and Janet Baker. 2023. TamagoPhone: A Framework for Augmenting Artificial Incubators to Enable Vocal Interaction Between Bird Parents and Eggs. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 15, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3565995.3566036
Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, and Daniel Leithinger. 2022. EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch. Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1330–1344.
Wu Yating, Sareen Harpreet, Miller Gabriel. “Soundyssey: Hybrid Enrichment System for Elephants in Managed Care” 2021. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI'21), Onlin, February 14-19, 2014. Association for Computing Machinery, 2021.
Asmar, Karen El; Sareen, Harpreet; "Machinic Interpolations: A GAN Pipeline for Integrating Lateral Thinking in Computational Tools of Architecture", p. 60-66 . In: Congreso SIGraDi 2020. São Paulo: Blucher, 2020. DOI 10.5151/sigradi2020-9
Zhou, Ran, Yanzhe Wu, and Harpreet Sareen. "HexTouch: Affective Robot Touch for Complementary Interactions to Companion Agents in Virtual Reality." 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. 2020. Best Demo Award
Ran Zhou, Yanzhe Wu, and Harpreet Sareen. 2020. HexTouch: A Wearable Haptic Robot for Complementary Interactions to Companion Agents in Virtual Reality. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 Emerging Technologies (SA '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 8, 1–2
Zhou R and Sareen H. "EmotiTactor: Emotional Expression of Robotic Physical Contact" Proceedings of the 2020 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference. ACM, 2020. Eindhoven, Netherlands. July 6.
Sareen H and Maes P. "Cyborg Botany: Exploring In-Planta Cybernetic Systems for Interaction." Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2019. Glasgow, Scotland. May 4-9 2019.
Sareen H, Zheng J, and Maes P. "Cyborg Botany: Augmented Plants as Sensors, Displays and Actuators" Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2019. Glasgow, Scotland. May 4-9 2019. Golden Mouse Award
Gugenheimer, J., Stemasov, E., Sareen, H., & Rukzio, E. March 2018. A Demonstration of FaceDisplay: Asymmetric Multi-User Interaction for Mobile VR. In 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) pp. 753-754. IEEE.
Gugenheimer J., Stemasov E., Sareen H, Rukzio E. May 2017. FaceDisplay: Towards Asymmetric Multi-User Interaction for Nomadic Virtual Reality. In Proceedings CHI 2018 (SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 2018. May 6-11, 2017. CHI ’17. ACM New York, NY.
Sareen Harpreet, Udayan Umapathi, Patrick Shin, Yasuaki Kakehi, Jifei Ou, Pattie Maes, Hiroshi Ishii. May 2017. Printflatables: Printing Human-scale, Functional and Dynamic Inflatable Objects. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Denver, US, May 6-11, 2017. CHI ’17. ACM New York, NY.
Leigh, Sang-won, Harpreet Sareen, Hsin-Liu Cindy Kao, Xin Liu, and Pattie Maes. "Body-Borne Computers as Extensions of Self." Computers 6, no. 1 2017: 12
Gugenheimer J., Stemasov E., Sareen H, Rukzio E. May 2017. FaceDisplay: Enabling Multi-User Interaction for Mobile Virtual Reality. Demo Paper. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Denver, US, May 6-11, 2017. CHI 17. ACM New York, NY.
Mangiatordi, A. Sareen, H. 2011. Farfalla project: Browser based accessibility solutions. In Proceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility Hyderabad, India, March 28 – 29, 2012. W4A '11. ACM New York, NY. Article No. 21. Best Challenge Paper Award
Performances and Appearances
http://harpreetsareen.com/press
Portfolio
Harpreet Sareen