Deb Chachra: Lucas J. Daniel Series in Sustainable Systems

Deb Chachra, author of (2023), and Professor of Engineering at Olin College of Engineering, presents the seventh annual Lucas J. Daniel Lecture in Sustainable Systems at the Institute of Design.

Deb Chachra's talk, "Just, Creative, and Cooperative: Our Shared Infrastructural Future," will consider how our infrastructural networks, including electricity, water and sewage, telecommunications, and transportation, shape and enable our lives as we know them. The networks that we benefit from today are the physical embodiment of the values of those who came before us. Today, with new possibilities of renewable energy generation at scale, we have the opportunity to transform these systems – and our built environment – to be reliable and sustainable, resilient and equitable.

This event will happen at the home of the Insitute of Design, on the Illinois Tech Mies campus in Bronzeville.

This event will be streamed but not recorded.

A Q&A with ID faculty member Jessica Meharry will follow the talk.

is currently Professor of Engineering at Olin College of Engineering, outside Boston, Massachusetts, where she was among the earliest faculty members. She works primarily at the intersection of technology and culture: she writes, thinks, speaks, builds, consults, collaborates, and facilitates globally, with a focus on infrastructure and the built environment, design, equity and inclusion, and education (particularly engineering education). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Time, The Guardian, and Nature. She appeared on Vox’s “FuturePerfect 2024” list of activists and thinkers working to build a more positive future, and her TED talk on infrastructure can be found online.

Faculty Organizers

is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institute of Design, where she teaches courses in the politics of design, critical contexts of design, and the philosophical context of design research. She develops justice-oriented design methodologies for professional practice. Her forthcoming book, (Bloomsbury, September 2024) is a practical guide to working on real-life briefs in the design studio.

The focus of ID’s annual event in memory of ID alum Lucas J. Daniel (1974–2017) is to drive discourse in sustainability and systems design, areas Lucas was passionate about. Lucas was a 2005 Institute of Design (ID) graduate who spent 11 years at Chicago design and innovation consultancy gravitytank. There he applied holistic, systems-level thinking to food innovation.

At the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech, we look at the world in new ways to create the change we hope to see in it. Since our founding by Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, we’ve continually turned design into a powerful tool anyone can use to transform the systems that shape our lives—from cities, education, and finance to food, healthcare, and technology.

We’re the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students, and the first to offer a PhD. By uniting science and rigor with creativity and rapid iteration, we’re recognized around the globe as pioneers in human-centered design, systems design, and other methods that apply design to the real world.

It’s through these unique approaches that students, communities, and corporations learn to observe the systems they’re surrounded by—and envision the new worlds they can build from them. Here, learners and leaders discover what design makes possible. How it enables us to adapt with the speed, scale, and complexity of life. To anticipate change and the impact of our actions. And, most importantly, to imagine—then create—brighter futures for us all. Learn more about ID at id.iit.edu.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech, 3137 South Federal Street, Chicago, United States