Markus Schläpfer is an Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department at Columbia University. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from ETH Zurich and conducted postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and the Santa Fe Institute. Before joining Columbia University, he was a Principal Investigator at the ETH Future Cities Laboratory and an Assistant Professor (adjunct) at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
His research goal is to develop a science-based understanding of cities and use these insights to design people-centric, efficient, and resilient urban infrastructures. To achieve this goal, Markus Schläpfer and his research group combine new urban analytics and complexity science approaches with state-of-the-art infrastructure engineering techniques.
Prof. Schläpfer's work has been published in top-tier venues such as Nature (twice) and has been covered in the media worldwide. In addition, he won several prizes, including the First Prize in the Data for Development Challenge (2015), and he has been Finalist in the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year (2021).