James Intriligator
James Intriligator is a human factors engineer, designer, neuroscientist, and strategic innovator who treats AI not as a novelty, but as a new kind of thinking instrument. Trained as a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard and seasoned in venture capital and high-tech consulting, he has spent three decades gliding across neuroscience, psychology, consumer psychology, systems design, behavior change, and civic innovation. James spent several decades developing new tools and methods (such as Multidimensional Task Analysis and Persona Multiplication) that help others develop innovations by looking through-and-across (“transversing”) dimensions, opportunities, and constraints. For James, large language models have become “transversal gliders” – tools that let him explore vast problem terrains, stitch together unlikely domains, and help others see design opportunities they did not know were there.
At Tufts, he is Professor of the Practice and Director of Strategic Innovation in Mechanical Engineering, where he has helped grow human factors from a niche program into a thriving ecosystem of undergraduates and master’s students. Through the IDEA Lab and IDEA Lab @ Fletcher, he now convenes more than 120 students from over ten majors and nearly every school at Tufts – engineering, arts and sciences, nutrition, medicine, and The Fletcher School – plus students from other universities and even high schoolers. They work on moonshot projects that range from refugee data infrastructures and climate resilience to assistive technologies and democratic innovation, with several efforts moving toward patents and commercialization and supported by an emerging open-source IDEA Lab toolkit for replication anywhere.
James is also a builder of bridges between universities, industry, and the public sphere. He has helped bring in more than $1.1M in external funding from agencies such as the Navy, Army, Air Force, DHS, FAA, and the Missile Defense Agency, as well as partners like Triton Systems, IDSS, Oculus Research, and Bose. His patents range from self-synchronizing animations to space-weather prediction techniques, and he is actively working with colleagues and technology transfer teams on IP strategies for a new generation of inventions. Alongside this, he has served as an innovation catalyst and consultant to companies from consumer goods, to banks, to AI-rich platforms, helping teams reframe problems, surface non-obvious opportunities, and move ideas toward market.
Pedagogically, James is an internationally recognized educator: HEA National Teaching Fellow, Vice-President (USA) of the International Federation of National Teaching Fellows, FRSA, winner of Tufts’ Teaching with Technology award, and repeatedly shortlisted for university-wide teaching honors. His course and professor evaluations are consistently high, and student comments describe him as “one of the most incredible professors at Tufts,” “a master who wants to share his knowledge,” and “a great professor and an even better human.” In recent years he has become a key voice helping colleagues and students use AI responsibly, delivering talks and workshops on ChatGPT, generative AI, and the future of innovation across Tufts and international teaching-fellow networks.
Beyond the lab and classroom, James works in what he calls “transversal design” – moving fluidly across art, technology, and social justice. He co-created the computer visuals for the touring Transversal Media works “Curie, Curie!” and “The Passage,” and he is developing a book on transversal design that weaves together design methods, ethics, and AI-enabled creativity. His civic and democracy work includes Education and Democracy United (EDU) and a wide array of collaborations on food systems, environmental justice, and public-interest technology. Colleagues and students repeatedly turn to him for something specific: the ability to listen carefully, traverse multiple domains at once, and surface ideas that make people say, “I hadn’t thought of it that way—but now I can’t unsee it.”
Sherman Notes: James and I have formed a uniquely productive and powerful professional relationship, centered around his distinctive, imaginative creativity, and Trebuchet projects. It is so importantly a far more personal bond, forged ironically remotely, with extensive Zooms and remote conversations over months of conversation and wild gliding voyages, during my infirmity, subsequent spine operation, and now extended recovery. We have so much in common. His warmth, and decency, his infectious good nature and ability to extend cannot be explained.
It is visceral and deep. I met him only once thus far in person! He arrived with his delightful wife, Susanne, an Episcopalian Minister, one frigid late November night, at 10:30PM, toting a Zero Gravity chair to help me relax and prepare for my operation.
James is an irresistible, brilliant guy with the rare, long sought-after, “heart of gold!” I am so fortunate.
James Notes: I met Sherman through a chance introduction—and it felt a bit like stepping through a hidden door. A wonderful, empowering, and playful door into creativity and exploration. Sherman doesn’t simply have ideas; he seems to live inside an atmosphere of them: a buzzing cloud of depth, possibility, invention, rigor, and unusually good-natured humanity. Around him is a remarkable constellation of people—serious, curious, capable—each carrying their own lived experience and moral weight, and each somehow more reachable because Sherman makes the space hospitable. That ecosystem—Trebuchet and Convisero—feels like an Aladdin’s cave of civic intelligence: not just relationships, but resources, histories, and latent initiatives waiting to be activated. What excites me is not just the awesome people. Nor is it the “networking” in the usual sense; it’s the possibility of mobilizing this community into real artifacts and projects—briefs, curricula, convenings, prototypes, partnerships—that can travel outward and compound impact. I’m honored Sherman invited me in, and I’m genuinely looking forward to meeting others and contributing to help the community stay coherent, alive, generative, and able to turn conversation into action.