Uri Wilensky

Northwestern University

Lorraine H. Morton chaired professor

Uri Wilensky is the Lorraine H. Morton Professor of Learning Sciences, Computer Science and Complex Systems at Northwestern University where he is the founding director of the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling and co-founder of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems. His research interests are in learning complexity and the use of computation to help learners make sense of complexity. He was a pioneer in studying how learners make sense of complex systems and in building tools that enable learners to model complex phenomena. He is the author of the award winning NetLogo software, the most widely used agent-based modeling environment both for scientific research and for education. His book on the methods of agent-based modeling is the leading text in the field. Through the NetLogo collection of software tools, he has built a toolkit for constructionist engagement with the practice of modeling and model-based inquiry. He has designed many curricular units in worldwide use that fundamentally integrate computational modeling into STEM and Social Science classrooms. He has published more than 400 scientific papers, and, through the NetLogo models library, has published more than 500 agent-based models across a wide range of content domains. He is the co-inventor of restructuration theory that studies how changes in encodings of knowledge transform its content and learnability. This ongoing work describes and analyzes the transformation of knowledge in the context of computational literacy.