Dr. Mihai Nadin
- Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Interactive Media
- Ashbel Smith Professor (Former)
The University of Texas at Dallas supports the Ashbel Smith Professorship. Dr. Ashbel Smith was the first president of the UT System Board of Regents. He had a long and distinguished career in medicine, education and public service. During his term on the Board of Regents, Smith was dedicated to recruiting the best faculty members available and to developing a curriculum befitting a “university of the first class.” Smith became known as both the “father of Texas medicine” and the “father of The University of Texas.”
“Instead of becoming the MIT of the Southwest, UT Dallas is affirming a different academic identity: students enthusiastic about original ideas. Exceptional members of the faculty, from all schools, never refusing the chance to interact with my students, make me feel at home, even in hot Dallas. Yes, I am teaching because it gives me a chance to continue learning, and boy, do I learn at UT Dallas.”
The author of more than 20 books and over 200 articles, Dr. Mihai Nadin has lectured and written extensively on the mind, anticipation and dynamic systems, visualization, ubiquitous computing and various aspects of human-computer and human-technology interaction.
He is credited with introducing various terms and phrases that have found wide usage throughout society, including “semiotic machine,” “the civilization of illiteracy” and “anticipatory computing.” Nadin was a pioneer of computational design in 1994 at the University of Wuppertal (Germany). Its purpose was to develop a computational theory of design. Computational design is the theory and practice of design for the age of ubiquitous computing.
Nadin’s most recent research is focused on anticipation, a research domain he initiated almost 40 years ago. After research at Stanford University and UC Berkeley, he developed possibility models for market processes, auction models and real-time radio-astronomy data processing.
Nadin founded the antÉ – Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems in 2002. In 2004, he brought it to UT Dallas. The International Journal of General Systems awarded him its Best of 2010 publication award. In January 2012, he was published in a special issue of the journal, documenting some of his research at UT Dallas.
Nadin has a PhD in aesthetics from the University of Bucharest and a post-doctoral degree in philosophy, logic and theory of science from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He earned a master’s degree and a PhD in electronics and computer science from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Bucharest. His most recent award was a distinguished fellowship at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Studies.