![Jota Samper](/cedar/sites/default/files/styles/small/public/people/jota_samper-13byw.jpg?itok=oiYhfnyz)
Jota Samper is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Design Program ENVD at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is an architect and planner; he has taught architecture, urban design, and planning. His work at Informal Settlements Research ISR concentrates on sustainable urban growth and dwells at the intersection between urban informality (“slums”) and violent urban conflict. The main goal of ISR is to create and reveal innovative urban tools to visualize the challenges (climate, regulatory, and violence) presented in informal landscapes. He is a co-founder of Mobility/Movilidad, a nonprofit dedicated to video archiving and mapping with marginalized communities. He Co-Directs the Community Engagement, Design, and Research Center (CEDaR) at CU Boulder. Born and raised in Medellín, he obtained his BA in architecture at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, has a master’s in City Planning, and a Ph.D. On Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he lectured. His project “Living rooms at the Border,” with estudio teddy cruz, exhibited at the MoMA. He is a fellow of the “Drugs, Security and Democracy, SSRC,” alongside colleges from Oxford University, he developed the “The Changing Character of Conflict Platform,” Samper’s work the “Atlas of Informality” has been presented in a