Surj Patel, M.A.

Visiting Instructor of Computer Science, Shiley School of Engineering 

Surj Patel is a computer scientist by training, a programmer, media producer, and product manager by profession, and joined the University as an adjunct instructor in Spring 2021. His academic training includes a bachelor of science in computer science from the University of Manchester and a master’s degree in media arts and sciences from the MIT Media Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Surj sees product management and entrepreneurship as a way to spread the benefits of innovation and to earn money to feed his habit of buying gadgets and then opening them up to see how they work. Career highlights have included being on the founding teams for the BBC website in 1994, working as an imagineer for Orange Imagineering, and serving on the founding team of GigaOM, a technology media startup. Surj is a winner of a Royal Television Society award for early innovation work on virtual reality, a grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation, and serves as a subject matter expert on the Internet of Things. He is very passionate about computation, computers, and sharing his passion with others who are interested in innovative applications of computers in culture and media. Surj plays the electric "very rock" guitar, is a trained sound engineer, a self-appointed comedian, and is an obsessive and competitive cook who enjoys bringing people together to get overly excited about new things.