Dr. Sachit Mahajan
Senior Scientist and Lecturer
Computational Social Science (COSS)
Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (D-GESS)
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
About Me
My research sits at the cutting edge of Ubiquitous Computing, Environmental Sensing, and Data Science, aiming to develop innovative, data-driven solutions to pressing societal challenges. I am passionate about exploring the critical interfaces between technology, the environment, and society, focusing on urban analytics and spatial data science to enhance smart cities and promote environmental sustainability. By integrating technological citizenship, ethics, and participatory approaches, my work empowers communities to co-create smarter, more resilient urban environments.
Currently, I am working at the Computational Social Science group at ETH Zurich. My research focuses on the intersection of technological citizenship, ethics, and participatory approaches to address key societal challenges related to smart cities and environmental sustainability. By leveraging principles of self-organization and the 'wisdom of crowds,' I aim to promote environmental resilience and sustainability. My work involves field and lab experiments to understand how value-sensitive design can be integrated into environmental monitoring and IoT systems. This integration seeks to foster collective intelligence and support the interests of civil society. Additionally, I explore the role of citizen science and co-creation, empowering individuals and communities to actively participate in the development and implementation of smart city technologies.
Before coming to ETH Zurich, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge's Department of Sociology, where I worked with Prof. Jennifer Gabrys. Prior to that, I worked as a Research Fellow at the GCARE Lab at the University of Surrey.
I was awarded a Taiwan International Graduate Program Fellowship for my PhD (2015-2019). I conducted my research at the Network Research Lab at Academia Sinica's Institute of Information Science, under the supervision of Prof. Ling-Jyh Chen. I was enrolled in the Social Networks and Human Centered Computing Program.
News!
May 2024. Practicalities of community-led continuous water quality monitoring: lessons from Taiwan and UK pilots has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Environmental Science.
May 2024. The Open Forum paper on the Executioner Paradox has been published in AI & Society.
May 2024. A new version of greenR R package has been released. The paper about the package has been published in Ecological Indicators.
Feb 2024. Our work on pedestrian perception of future street scenarios has been published in Scientific Reports.
August, 2023. Our work on Smart Cities and Access to Nature has been published in IEEE Access.
July, 2023. Our work on Democracy by Design has been published in the Journal of Computational Science.
Our Co-creation and IAQ work was featured in "Community science draws on the power of the crowd" in Nature.
May, 2022. Our paper titled "Participatory Resilience:Surviving, Recovering and Improving Together" has been accepted for publication in Sustainable Cities and Society.