Uri Wilensky

Uri Wilensky is an American computer scientist and the creator of NetLogo, an agent-based modeling platform that he first developed in 1999. He is the Lorraine H. Morton Professor of Learning Sciences, Computer Science and Complex Systems at Northwestern University, where he directs the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling. He also co-founded the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and co-founded and co-directs the university's joint Computer Science and Learning Sciences doctoral program. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Brandeis University, took master's degrees at Brandeis and Harvard, and earned his doctorate at the MIT Media Lab, where Seymour Papert was his advisor. His theory of restructurations asks how representing knowledge in computational media changes the way people think and learn, especially about complex systems. In NetLogo, students build and explore models in which agents follow simple behaviors from which large-scale patterns emerge. He received the ISDDE Prize for Excellence in Educational Design in 2016 and the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2025, and was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2022 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024.