I offer a variety of bios, below, of different lengths, to choose from: starting from a boring version (50 words) to ones that are approximately 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000 words long. Take your pick, though I recommend the 150 word and the funny Bing Chat version. You can also download my Vita [PDF file, last updated January 2024] or find photos for use in publicity materials.
Punya Mishra Bio: 50 words (boring version)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute and Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology, creativity and aesthetics in learning, and the application of design to educational innovation.
Punya Mishra Bio: 50 words (slightly more interesting)
Punya Mishra juggles being a learning engineer, professor, researcher, author, artist, and designer at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He is interested in life, the universe, and everything; and loves shoehorning Douglas Adams’ book titles into his bio statement. You can find him at punyamishra.com
Punya Mishra Bio: 100 words (hits the high points)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is the Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute and Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. As director, he provides strategic vision around research, program development, and public engagement. He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology, creativity, and the application of design to educational innovation. A TED-Ed educator and AERA Fellow he is ranked in the top 2% of scientists worldwide, and the top-50 scholars with the biggest influence on practice and policy. He is an award-winning instructor, engaging public-speaker and an accomplished visual artist.
Punya Mishra Bio: 150 words (maybe the right size)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at Arizona State University’s Learning Engineering Institute and Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. A TED-Ed educator and AERA Fellow he is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology, creativity, and design-based educational innovation. He has received over $11 million in grants, published over 200 articles, and edited 5 books. With over 60,000 citations of his work, he ranks in the top 2% of scientists worldwide, and top 50 scholars influencing educational policy. He previously served as Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation and director of doctoral programs (at MLFTC) and director of the award-winning MA in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. He serves on ASU’s Leadership Academy steering committee, AACTE’s Technology and Innovation Committee, and as editor-in-residence for the Journal of Teacher Education. He is an award-winning instructor, engaging public speaker, and accomplished visual artist.
Punya Mishra Bio: 200 words (slightly more than you may need)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute and Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He also has anaffiliate appointment in ASU’s Design School. As director, he provides strategic vision around research, program development, and public engagement to the institute. Prior to this he served as associate dean of Scholarship & Innovation, leading multiple initiatives, on developing a future-forward, equity-driven, collaborative approach to educational research. He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of design to educational innovation. He has received over $11 million in grants; published over 200 articles and edited 5 books. With over 60,000 citations of his research, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide and the top 50 scholars with the biggest influence on educational practice and policy. An AERA Fellow and TED-Ed educator, he co-hosts the award-winning Silver Lining for Learning and the Learning Futures podcasts. He is an award-winning instructor, having taught courses, at all levels in educational technology, educational psychology, design, and creativity. He is also an engaging public-speaker and an accomplished visual artist.
Punya Mishra Funny Bio: 242 words (Written by Bing Chat, and lightly edited by me)
Note: I asked Bing Chat to write a humorous, self-deprecatory first person introduction to Punya Mishra. I took what it has come up with and edited it lightly—essentially tweaked a couple of phrases and deleted one sentence.
Hello, I’m Punya Mishra, and I have a serious identity crisis. I don’t know if I’m a Director of learning futures, a professor, a researcher, an author, or a designer. I work at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, where I try to do everything though the end results are never entirely clear. I’m interested in education, technology, creativity, and design, but don’t ask me to define these terms—because you know, “it’s complicated.”
You may have heard of me as the co-creator of the TPACK framework, which is a fancy way of saying that teachers should know what they are doing when they use technology in their teaching. I have also done some work on humanistic pedagogy, design thinking, and creativity education, but, once again, don’t ask me to explain them to you. I have received some awards and recognitions for my research and teaching, but they are mostly based on hype and luck.
I enjoy sharing my ideas and insights with diverse audiences through various platforms, but they usually don’t listen or care. I’m a TED-Ed educator, a co-host of the Silver Lining for Learning webinar and the Value Laden and Learning Futures podcasts, and a frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences. I’m also an avid blogger and an accomplished visual artist, but only in my own mind. You can find more about me and my work at punyamishra.com, but don’t expect too much.
Punya Mishra Bio: 500 words (maybe more than you need)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute and Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He also has an affiliate appointment in ASU’s Design School. As director, he provides strategic vision around research, program development, and public engagement to the institute. He also serves on ASU’s Leadership Academy steering committee, AACTE’s Technology and Innovation Committee, and as editor-in-residence for the Journal of Teacher Education. He has an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering; two Masters degrees, in Visual Communication and Mass Communications; and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.
He is internationally recognized for his work in educational technology; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of design-based approaches to educational innovation. He has received over $11 million in grants; published over 200 articles and edited 5 books. He co-developed the TPACK framework, described as “the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years.” With over 60,000 citations, he is ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide and the top 50 scholars (top 10 in psychology) with the biggest influence on educational policy. An AERA Fellow and TED-Ed educator, he co-hosts the award-winning Silver Lining for Learning and the Learning Futures podcasts.
Punya has extensive leadership experience in higher education, having previously served as Associate Dean of Scholarship & Innovation, at MLFTC leading multiple initiatives that supported faculty and doctoral students in interdisciplinary research; expanding external grant activity; and creating partnerships with units across and outside the university. He led a team of educational designers who worked with schools to bring collaborative, design-based approaches to educational innovation which led to the design of an innovative school model.
Prior to ASU, Dr. Mishra was at Michigan State University where he directed the award-winning Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. He received the 2016 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award for his “comprehensive and sustained record of scholarly excellence in research and creative activities, instruction and outreach.” He has chaired the Creativity SIG for the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education, and the Innovation & Technology Committee of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. He was a member of the School Board for the Okemos Public School District.
Dr. Mishra has taught courses at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels in educational technology, educational psychology, design, and creativity. He has also taught courses on creativity, innovation and design for MBA programs at the Indian School of Business and the Broad School of Business. Among the accolades he has received for his teaching are a Lilly Fellowship, the MSU Teacher Scholar Award, the College of Education’s Teaching Excellence Award, and the AT&T-MSU award for Instructional Technology.
Dr. Mishra is an in-demand, engaging public speaker, with over 50 keynotes and invited presentations. He is also an accomplished visual artist whose creative work has been featured in design and puzzle magazines as well as a solo exhibition at the MSU Museum.
Punya Mishra Bio: 994 words (definitely more than anybody needs)
Punya Mishra (punyamishra.com) is Director of Innovative Learning Futures at the Learning Engineering Institute and Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He also has an affiliate appointment in ASU’s Design School. As director, he provides strategic vision around research, program development, and public engagement to the institute. He is internationally recognized for his work in technology integration in teaching; the role of creativity and aesthetics in learning; and the application of collaborative, design-based approaches to educational innovation. He (with Dr. M. J. Koehler) developed the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, which has been described as being “the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years.”
He has received over $11 million in grants; published over 200 articles and edited 5 books. An AERA Fellow and TED-Ed educator, he is ranked #48 among the top 200 university-based scholars (top 10 in psychology) who had the biggest influence on educational practice and policy (2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings). He is also among the top 2% of most widely cited scientists worldwide (Stanford/Elsevier, 2022). In 2011 he was named as one of the ten most influential people in educational technology by the readers and editors of Technology and Learning journal. As per Google Scholar, Dr. Mishra has over 60,000 citations of his research, with an h-index of 66 and an i-10 index of 186, overall.
Dr. Mishra is extensive leadership experience in higher education. Apart from his current role as Director of Learning Futures Innovation, he also heads the AI in Education, Learning Futures Collaborative, and serves ASU’s Leadership Academy steering committee, AACTE’s Technology and Innovation Committee, and as editor-in-residence for the Journal of Teacher Education. From 2016-24 he served as the Associate Dean of Scholarship and Innovation and led a range of initiatives that provides a future-forward, equity driven, approach to educational research and scholarship at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. These include supporting faculty and doctoral students in interdisciplinary research; expanding external grant activity; creating partnerships with units across and outside the university; developing strategies for public scholarship and more. In addition, Dr. Mishra led a team of design strategists who work with school districts and other educational organizations to bring an intentional, contextually grounded, collaborative, design-based approach to educational innovation to meet the systemic challenges faced by schools. This has led, among other things, to a new school-model in a local school district (The SPARK school) as well as to a series of workshops with 21 vertical school/district teams from across the nation (and a few international schools) on re-imagining school post COVID. His office also supported a wide variety of efforts to expand the scholarly impact of faculty work, including but not limited to developing a new humanistic vision for technology in learning; designing new lab-spaces for exploration and discovery-based learning (the IgnitED labs); supporting scholarly journals published at the college; developing alternative ways of promoting scholarly work—such as the Learning Futures podcast and the Learning Futures Science Fiction series (in collaboration with Slate Magazine). At the university level he has led an intra-university team of leaders (Team Leadership Academy) to re-imagine educational innovation to address issues related to access and scale, and was selected to be part of the Advanced Leadership Initiative for future leaders at ASU. He has served as a faculty mentor undergraduate students and organizations including the Unified Society of South Asians. He also co-hosts the award-winning Silver Lining for Learning webinar, as well as the Value Laden and Learning Futures podcasts.
Prior to coming to ASU, Dr. Mishra was at Michigan State University where he directed the award-winning Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. In 2016 he received the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award for his comprehensive and sustained record of scholarly excellence in research and creative activities, instruction and outreach. He co-led (with Dr. Gunnings-Moton and Dr. Wolf) of the MSU-UrbanSTEM project, working with STEM educators Chicago Public Schools over 4 years. He was part of the team that designed the hybrid-doctoral program in Educational Psychology & Educational Technology. He has served on the Executive Council of the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education; and started and served as chair of the Creativity Special Interest Group at the same organization. He (with Dr. Matthew J. Koehler) co-chaired the SITE2011 conference and is former chair of the Innovation & Technology Committee of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). He was a member of the School Board for the Okemos Public School District.
Dr. Mishra is an award-winning instructor who has taught courses at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels in the areas of educational technology, educational psychology, inclusive design, and creativity. He has also taught courses and conducted workshops on creativity, innovation and design for the MBA program at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad) as well as the Executive MBA program at the Broad School of Business, MSU. Dr. Mishra has received many accolades for his teaching, including a Lilly Faculty Fellowship (2001), the MSU Teacher Scholar Award (2004), the College of Education’s Teaching Excellence Award (2006), and the AT&T-MSU award for Instructional Technology twice (2008 & 2014).
Dr. Mishra has an undergraduate degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering (from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani), Masters degrees in Visual Communication (from Industrial Design Center, IIT Mumbai), and Mass Communications (from Miami University, Oxford Ohio), and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
Dr. Mishra is a gifted, creative and engaging public speaker, having made multiple keynotes and invited presentations for associations and conferences nationally and internationally. He is also an accomplished visual artist and poet. His creative work has been featured in international design and puzzle magazines and websites. His work on mathematics and visual wordplay was the focus of an exhibition at the MSU Museum in 2015-16. You can find out more about him by going to https://punyamishra.com/