In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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Sam Pitroda

Former Advisor to the Prime Minister, Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations

Sam Pitroda, Institute of Design Board Member

Sam Pitroda is an internationally recognized telecom inventor, entrepreneur, development thinker, and policy maker who has spent 50 years in information and communications technology (ICT) and related global and national developments.

Credited with having laid the foundation for India’s telecommunications and technology revolution of the 1980s, Sam has been a leading campaigner to help bridge the global digital divide. During his tenure as advisor to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Sam led six technology missions related to telecommunications, water, literacy, immunization, dairy production, and oil seeds. He was also the founder and first chairman of India’s Telecom Commission. In these plural roles, Sam helped revolutionize India’s development philosophies and policies with a focus on access to technology as the key to social change.

As a way to induce the second phase of India’s technology revolution, in 2005 Sam headed India’s National Knowledge Commission (2005-2009) to provide a blueprint of reform for the knowledge-related institutions and infrastructure for the 21st century in the country. 

Recently, Sam served as advisor to the prime minister of India on public information infrastructure and innovation, with the rank of cabinet minister. He served as the chairman of the Smart Grid Task Force as well as the committees to reform public broadcasting, modernize railways, deliver e-governance, and other developmental activities. 

Sam is a founding commissioner of the United Nations Broadband Commission for Digital Development and Chairman of the International Telecommunication Union’s m-Powering Development Board that looks to empower developing countries with the use of mobile technology.

In addition, Sam is a serial entrepreneur, having started several companies in the United States. He holds over 15 honorary PhDs and close to 100 worldwide patents  and has published and lectured widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He lives in Chicago with his wife.