Deputy Director
Michael Krisch is the Deputy Director at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a bicoastal research center at Columbia Journalism School and Stanford Engineering that reimagines how we find and tell stories. In his role, Krisch oversees a myriad of special projects and grants, including bicoastal collaborations, while also shaping the Institute’s programmatic offerings.
A noteworthy project under Krisch’s leadership is the Mapping Local News initiative, conceived in partnership with the Lenfest Institute and the Philadelphia Inquirer. This ambitious venture employs machine learning to empower the Inquirer to critically assess equity and representation in their content. In his most recent work Grades of Heat, users can explore the thermal legacy of redlining and access data on heat disparities in communities across the United States.
In the classroom, Krisch leads Points Unknown, a spatial analysis and visualization curriculum that is implemented through workshops and courses at Columbia Journalism School and the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University. In these courses, students learn remote sensing and GIS as a tool for investigation and communication. The course is primarily taught through programming using python and javascript, and leverages tools including Earth Engine, Mapbox, and QGIS.