Maneesh Agrawala, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named the next director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute at Stanford. Agrawala will assume the post in the fall, when he also will join the School of Engineering’s faculty as a professor of computer science.

A Stanford graduate with a PhD in computer science, Agrawala pursues research that is “an ideal match with the mission of the Institute,” said Bernd Girod, the current director of the Brown Institute at Stanford and the Robert L. and Audrey S. Hancock Professor in the School of Engineering.

Agrawala has done seminal work on design principles for visual communication, interactive tools for digital storytelling, and the perceptual and collaborative aspects of visual analysis techniques. His teaching, which includes courses in visualization, human computer interaction and computer graphics, connects computational thinking and design thinking. He co-taught the first short course on computation and journalism in 2008.

He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a SIGGRAPH significant New Research Award and an NSF CAREER award.

Girod will lead the Brown Institute at Stanford until Agrawala arrives at Stanford, and he will remain involved as a regular faculty member and a member of the Advisory Board.

Established in 2012, the Brown Institute is a collaboration between Stanford and Columbia University designed to encourage and support new endeavors in media innovation.