Paul Pangaro

Paul Pangaro is a Visiting Scholar in Computational Design at Carnegie Mellon Architecture. Previously, he was a Professor of Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Design. Paul is the President of the American Society for Cybernetics.

Paul's career spans startups, consulting, research and education. His work explores the role of conversation in expanding human agency in human-human as well as human-machine interactions. His knowledge and practice of cybernetics, systems, conversation theory, design and artificial intelligence are the basis of his approach. 

Paul and Hugh Dubberly co-chair the Systems Working Group in the Future of Design Education Initiative. As an educator, Paul begins with the conviction that 21st-century designers, architects and technologists must wholly engage with the complex systems that comprise the entangled domains of technology and human nature, society and justice, climate change and planet health. 

With the American Society for Cybernetics, Paul is leading an initiative to revive and revise the renowned Macy Meetings from the birth of cybernetics. Now dubbed #NewMacy, the initiative has attracted an international community of transdisciplinary and transgenerational participants committed to addressing the complex systems-level challenges mentioned above.

Paul is deeply committed to bringing the field of cybernetics to light across multiple disciplines and domains. Paul and TJ McLeish have created a full-scale, faithful replica of Gordon Pask’s seminal interactive work Colloquy of Mobiles, which was exhibited at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2019 and is now part of the permanent collection of the ZKM Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany.