New Undergraduates Announcement!
Congratulations to our latest new media undergraduate certificate candidates! We were astounded by the breadth of disciplines represented by this great cohort and are excited to work deeply on issues of new media with these students!
Tristan Caro
Tristan Caro is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Cognitive Science and Film Studies. He has directed three major short films and done a wide variety of work with the moving image. Tristan is the Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Media Review, a student-run publication that discusses various media.
Jordy Coutin
Jordy Coutin is a senior at UC Berkeley triple majoring in Economics, Philosophy, and Conservation and Resource Studies. Jordy is curious to see if the increasing complexity and technical nature of environmental solutions, like desalinization, effectively leaves political moral decisions in the hands of those who speak the technical language, and not in the hands of those who have specialized knowledge of institutional design.
Simrit Dhillon
Simrit Dhillon is a fourth year undergraduate triple majoring in Philosophy, Political Science, and Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF) major. Simrit is taking this unique opportunity to understand and assess the role new media (such as social media and independent journalism) will play in liberal capitalist democracies. She is interested in understanding the extent to which new media can create and sustain "counter culture" notions, whether these notions are truly democratic, and what sort of audience independent new media can reach.
Alexandra Ellman
Alexandra Ellman is a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Media Studies. Studying New Media has allowed Alexandra to interactively use her Media knowledge into actuality through design. Currently, she is in a design course working on curating a trilingual exhibition on electronic literature through building concrete prototypes of interactive displays, designing user flows through the exhibition, and developing a website to accompany it.
Jennifer Hartmann
Jennifer Hartman is a practicing artist, student, freelancer, and gallery intern. Jennifer’s current works attempt to create a dialogue around the micro-violent moments she experiences as a woman on a daily basis through space, line work, and minimalism. In 2011 she received an AA at College of the Canyons and is currently working on her B.A in Art Practice at UC Berkeley. She works as an intern and has shown work with the Worth Ryder Art Gallery in Berkeley. When she is in Los Angeles, she also works as an assistant for local artist and printmaker Jim Mazza of Mazza Illustrations.
Wendy Ho
Wendy Ho is a UC Berkeley senior majoring in Sustainable Environmental Design with a minor in Landscape Architecture. She is particularly interested in developing a more critical understanding of the effect of new media on modern day communication and globalization. Wendy finds new media fascinating because it encompasses cross-disciplinary tools in art, tech, and more, which are at the forefront of innovation.
Ashley Jerbic
My curiosity for studying Art History has driven me to investigate new opportunities held in the digital humanities. My interest mainly lies in the many opportunities this field has to offer, such as the combining of methodologies from traditional disciplines with the tools provided by computing. Such tools employed in scholarly research challenge existing theoretical paradigms, generating new questions and pioneering new approaches. As a result, I have spent the past year reconstructing Mission San Gabriel so that this project would continue to make progress toward achieving such an objective. Therefore, within my research, I am pursuing the powerful alliance between such disciplines as the humanities and the digital world. Thus, striving to rebuild what has been lost in a new and innovative form.
Valerie Law
Valerie Law is a fourth-year studying philosophy. Her main interests are media and design, and she is drawn to the Berkeley Center for New Media because of its interdisciplinary rigor and demand for theory combined with practice. In the past, Valerie has interned at digital and advertising agencies and worked at the university art museum. She is passionate about things that are interactive and transformative, and plans to apply philosophical experience in topics like perception, the mind, and epistemology to her research in new media.
Leanna Leung
Leanna Leung is a Senior studying Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Human Cognition, Innovation, and Design Thinking. She is currently researching development engineering and humanitarian design: the intersection of business, technology, and design in the development of solutions that meet human needs and address social issues. Specifically, she writes on addressing Design Imperialism through Human-Centered Design. She seeks to explore interdisciplinary, integrated, and holistic approaches to solving issues related to poverty, health, and education.
Audrey Linden
Audrey Linden is a sophomore majoring in Rhetoric with a concentration in Narrative and Image. She's particularly interested in how new media and art can create experience for the human being (such as texting, social media, or interactive art spaces) and how those experiences create new realities that might not have been possible otherwise.
Jay Mahabal
Jay Mahabal is a fourth-year Mathematics student at UC Berkeley interested in the connection between design, cartography, and technology. He's especially interested in data-driven approaches to maps and journalism pieces, to create some sort of social impact. Jay's other hobbies include photography and debating.
Sahil Mohan
Sahil Mohan has always been obsessed with how human beings perceive the world around them, and how their perceptions are manipulated by design. Whether it be the colors they see, the fabric they wear, or the furniture within their house, often times these items affect the way they act and feel, and this is because of comprehensive design research of which they are unaware. He has mainly been interested in how spatial and color dynamics elicit specific responses within two and three dimensional realms. Through this program, Sahil wants to learn more about human-centered design approaches, with a specific focus on the body, so that he can not only create an environment of comfort, but also manipulate how people experience the world around them.
Michael Roe
Michael Roe is a senior at UC Berkeley studying Cognitive Science with a minor in Computer Science. His objectives for the Undergraduate Certificate in New Media is to further apply the fabrication skills which he's learned within New Media curriculum with the other aspects of his academics: both Cognitive Science and Computer Science. Michael is seeking complete a final project during in an independent study that discusses the intersection these ideas, namely language production schemes, computer-generated randomness, and new media.
James Rosenberg
James Rosenberg is a junior majoring in Philosophy and Political Science, with an emphasis in Political Philosophy and Theory. Through his engagement in the undergraduate certificate program in New Media, James hopes to apply his interests in political philosophy and political theory to the ever-changing landscape of new media. James is interested in how political ideologies are formulated, disseminated, and then entrenched in political communities by way of different forms of media.
Jinoh (Kahn) Ryu
Jinoh (Kahn) Ryu is a third year student in the Gender and Women’s Studies major. Two of their previous research attended to the linguistic formation of transcultural sensibilities among East Asian UC Berkeley students who identify as “Third Culture Kids” and women, and the production of toxic masculinity among South Korean transgender men in their online communities. Kahn's senior thesis investigates Korean media depictions of a “cosmetic surgery monster,” discerning neoliberal consumerism as a force that conditionally queers its promised, heteronormative national future. Kahn’s next project seeks to explore the varying roles of personal blogging in the experience of trauma-triggered responses, in particular depersonalization.
Mia Semelman
Mia Semelman is a junior philosophy major and theater minor. Specifically, Mia is interested in how media influences us in ways that we might want to deem “wrong” or “harmful” and what, if anything, we can do about it. She is also interested in how the media perpetuates norms and stereotypes and in particular, how it might perpetuate the oppression of minorities.
Stephanie Thatcher
Stephanie Thatcher is currently a junior studying Philosophy and Legal Studies. Primarily interested in ethics, political philosophy, and political morality, Stephanie is interested in looking at how individuals work well together. Driven by a passion for ethics, Stephanie is currently working as a Copywriter and Moderator at BetterCompany as well as a Copywriter at WebDam.
Mallory Welty
Mallory Welty is a fourth year here at UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in Aptos, California and transferred to Cal in 2014 as an intended philosophy major. Her research interests include social issues that involve intimate relationships, gender studies, ethics/morality, political philsophy and the philosophy of language/semantics. Mallory thoroughly enjoys design/graphic media, music, singing jazz, running, and making new, unexpected connections here within the UC Berkeley community.
Jerilyn Wu
Jerilyn Wu is a junior at UC Berkeley majoring in Human Geography and minoring in Sustainable Design. With living and travel experience in over forty countries, she's passionate about understanding how social innovation can improve environmental health and the urban experience. With a keen interest in corporate sustainability, she currently serves as an Administrative Assistant at UC Berkeley's International and Executive Programs and as a Market Analyst at Ignite Farm, a venture capital that identifies high potential consumer packaged goods and digital media companies. Her dedication towards understanding new media stems from her past work experience in communications and sales at UNICEF Malaysia and the Blue Cross Shield Association (BCBSA) among other reputable organizations.
YiPu Zheng
YiPu Zheng is a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in Mechanical Engineerin. By combining perspectives and skills from both engineering and art, YiPu is dedicated to creating insightful interactive installations and interfaces that explore and present more possibilities on interaction/relationships between people and emerging technologies. Through her work, YiPu hopes to intrigue people to dream bigger and think deeper about future of humanity and technology.