News/Research

Announcing Our 2017 Graduates

16 May, 2017

Announcing Our 2017 Graduates

The BCNM is excited to share the myriad accomplishments of our graduate students who this year received their Ph.D.s and Masters diplomas. We’re sad to bid them farewell, but look forward to following their success in their new endeavors!

Designated Emphasis

Kyle Booten

Kyle Booten (Education) has accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth. The mission of the Neukom Institute is to support a broad view of computational investigation across campus, and to catalyze creative thought throughout the Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, and Business, for undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. Kyle’s work will serve him well in this new role as he explored the connections and dissonances between digital and print literacies at UC Berkeley as a BCNM Lyman Fellow. The analysis of digital quotations and quotation practices complements Kyle’s work as an educator, through which uses the classroom as a space for understanding and participating in online quotation culture while cultivating hybrid practices that combine aspects of traditional and digital literacies. At BCNM, Kyle also continued his artistic practice in poetry, using new modes of computation to build exquisite electronic literature.

Jen DiZio

Jennifer DiZio (Education) will graduate from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education and the Berkeley Center for New Media. She was a Dean’s Scholar at the University of Delaware graduating Summa Cum Laude with a joint English and Fine Arts degree in 2004. In 2012 Jennifer was awarded the NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship to continue work in online education and in 104 she won the Graduate Student Instructor award for teaching excellence. Prior to commencing her studies at UC Berkeley, Jennifer worked as a producer for film and television in the US and UK. Most recently, Jennifer has joined Facebook as a Researcher where she conducts qualitative research in user experience.

Jenni Higgs

Jenni (Education) will be an Assistant Professor in Digital Technology and Educational Change in UC Davis’ School of Education in January, 2018. The interdisciplinary position will allow Jenni to continue collaborating across fields and throughout the Cal network. While at the BCNM, Jenni was named a Lyman Fellow for her work on digital talk. She also received funding to attend the Writing Research Across Borders conference in Colombia, Jenni received the National Academy of Education’s prestigious Spencer Fellowship, She was also integral in the Learning Mode conference BCNM hosted on Critical Issues in Online Education.
The position is for Assistant Professor in Digital Technology and Educational Change in UC Davis’ School of Education. My husband Dan is working in Muscat, Oman until Feb ’18, so Finny and I will be joining him for some months starting in June and I’ll officially start at Davis in January ’18. The position is super interdisciplinary, and I’m hoping to find ways to continue collaborating with my wonderful Cal network, including BCNM.

Andrea Horbinski

Andrea Horbinski (History) focuses on the history of Japan and empires in her dissertation “Manga’s Global Century,” which explores the history of Japanese comics from approximately 1905-2012. In addition to her research at UC Berkeley and BCNM, Andrea has served as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works (2012-15), and was on the Advisory Board of the Ada Initiative, a breakthrough not-for-profit advocating for women’s careers in open source software and related fields, before it ceased major operations in 2015. Over her time at UCB, Andrea has spoken about anime, manga, fandom, and Japanese history and folklore at conventions and conferences on five continents, and has published in Convergence, Mechademia, and Transformative Works and Cultures.

Amy Koehler-Catterson

Amy (Education) will graduate in May 2017 after a wonderful six years in the Graduate School of Education’s Language, Literacy, and Culture program and four years as a DE in New Media candidate. Amy’s dissertation, Close Reading in Secondary Classrooms: A 21st-Century Update for a 20th-Century Practice, critiques a textual analysis approach brought into schools by the Common Core State Standards and re-imagines it to better account for how young people today make meaning – by navigating a wide variety of texts and contexts, including digital spaces online. After graduating from Cal, Amy will pursue a career as a professor, and hopes to work with teacher candidates on reading and writing instruction. Amy is truly grateful for the camaraderie, mentorship, and resources she has received from the Berkeley Center for New Media; she can honestly say that her experiences here have changed her professional trajectory. It’s also been inspiring, eye-opening, and really fun – many thanks go to to the faculty, support staff, and her fellow students for making it so.

Kate Mattingly

Kate Mattingly (Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies) will join the School of Dance at the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor of Dance on the tenure track: I am looking forward to joining a department that has, historically and currently, played a major role in nurturing research in dance within higher education. When I visited the campus in February I was impressed by the caliber of the faculty, their investment in teaching, and the spirit of community and curiosity that is encouraged. As a dance scholar and historian, I have studied the important role that the University of Utah has played in creating an academic environment that honors the distinct aspects of ballet and modern dance. I am particularly looking forward to the development of a MFA degree for ballet dancers since this perfectly illustrates the ways that the School of Dance continues to be at the forefront of preparing students for enriching careers. My own research into the circulations of dance, and the ways that criticism and technology intersect, finds a conducive environment at the University of Utah which is home to one of the few certificate programs in Screendance. I am very grateful to BCNM and I know that my decision to pursue a Designated Emphasis in New Media helped me in this competitive job market. I especially appreciate the courses by BCNM faculty, the lectures I attended that were part of the History and Theory of New Media series, and the mentorship of Professor Abigail De Kosnik. Thank you!

John Scott

John Scott (Education) is continuing to conduct research in online learning analytics, develop collaborative learning tools, and design online/blended learning curricula. For the last several years, he has been working closely with his adviser Professor Glynda Hull, committee member Greg Niemeyer, and the programming team at Education Technology Services on the design of the SuiteC social learning software, where they have been implementing the tools in some innovative online courses as well as supporting instructors across campus and the UC system in adopting the tools in their courses. Most recently, they have begun development on an analytics dashboard funded through a National Science Foundation grant, which will serve as an extension of the existing SuiteC tools and will be used in a global youth writing community. For his dissertation research, John is exploring student use of the SuiteC tools in an undergraduate education course. Melding learning analytics and qualitative analysis techniques, he has been developing a methodological and theoretical approach to the study of online learning environments that builds off of “Assemblage” (DeLanda, 2016) concepts to explain the unfolding of complex socio-technical systems.

Certificate

Meghana Battini

Meghana Battini, an Architecture graduate student at CED and also a New Media Certified candidate from BCNM has been an Architect for more than 8 years. Through this certification program, Meghana took many design-based courses, which made her change her perspective towards Architectural design. She was introduced to the concept of ‘Design Thinking’ methodology and ‘User Centric’ design, which helped her think about space, its transitions and Architecture on the whole from a different perspective. Learning more about New Media Technologies and state of the art innovations/research projects allowed her to become a part of the evolving technological discussions. Meghana hopes to create a difference in the Architectural world of spatial transitions through design thinking methodology. She also looks forward to combining new media technologies like VR and robotics for better user based solutions and client interactions.

Xingyue Chen

After Xingyue (Architecture) graduates, she will keep exploring different possibilities of design to solve complex problems with simple solutions. She plans to pursue a career in Bay Area that could combine digital design with tangible user interface and virtual reality environment to create useful and delightful experience for people. Xingyue’s thesis was on 3D digital modeling with motion gestures on VR/AR platforms. Previously she interned at STUDIOS Architecture, participating in the concept design phase of the Google HQ design, and Dominique Perrault Architecture, where she participated in the design development for the Palace of Versailles renovation.

Andrea Gagliano

Andrea (Information) plans to pursue a career as an Interaction Designer continuing to work at the intersection of art and technology. She plans to use machine intelligence and user experience design to build tools that allow the user and machine to collaborate together more fluidly in creative acts such as painting, creative writing, brainstorming, etc. She also plans to continue to use technology as an artistic medium to critique and prompt conversations on today’s socio-technical issues such as privacy, cybersecurity, and automation. While at Cal, Andrea served as a GSI for Greg Niemeyer’s American Cycbercultures course. You can find her portfolio here.

Yuxu Han

Yuxu (Grace) has a Bachelor of Electronic and Information Engineering Degree from Capital Normal University in Beijing and now a Masters of Architecture from University of California Berkeley (UCB). Yuxu has several working experiences around the world in the architecture/design field; she took a gap year to do internship in Europe, both in Copenhagen with COBE and in Berlin with LAVA. She also worked with Woodsbagot Beijing in Asia projects. Yuxu is interested in how design trends travel across the globe, and how this knowledge combines with technology. She has interned with UCOP and UCSF to analyze energy performance and space management with regards to design proposals. After graduation, Yuxu is interested in beginning a career in architecture, exploring the possibilities of architecture in the new media era.

Shireen Khan

Upon graduating, Shireen (Architecture) expects to work at an architecture firm. Previously, she served as an architect at Natraj & Venkat Architects in Chennai, India. Shireen is passionate about parametric and generative design and has explored applications such as grasshopper and software such as processing that could lead to different approaches for form finding, representation and design itself. While at the BCNM, she enrolled in Critical Practices with Eric Paulos and Jill Miller, and had the opportunity to collaborate with students from various departments, while working with new platforms, such as Arduino.

Shari Paladino

Shari Paladino (Art Practice) will have her final thesis work Habitas: Dark Italian Cookery featured in the Berkeley Art Museum May 17 – June 11. Habitas Dark Italian Cookery is a family of play-based artwork with a focus on the domestic interior—a hybrid space, combining kitchen, lab, and school—and composed of sculptural works that incorporate wood or dough, digital video, photography, text and user interface. Habitas is an outlet for a critical investigation into nostalgia, self-definition, and belonging. Paladino brings her work together in a video performance Habitas: Recipes from the Dark Italian Cookery, for which she constructed a 1970s-80s television situation comedy set as a way to reflect on her past. Her script Dark Italian Recipe is performed within this back drop of artist-designed architecture, wallpapers, fabrics, and furniture, including a cuckoo clock that does not tell time or make a sound, and a bread hutch that serves as pinball machine.Paladino examines ways in which the preservation of family recipes conjure claims of ownership and authenticity intrinsic to a given heritage. Her Dark Italian Recipe is a semi-autobiographical text told in twelve different cut-up voices, each one printed in a different font. The text is transcribed and adapted from an episode of the radio series This American Life, telling the hidden paternity story of the artist’s bi-racial brother. The term “Dark Italian” comes under scrutiny for the role it plays in the family’s response to having one mixed race child. The term’s peculiar combination of racism and charade is explored in Paladino’s script. The artist investigates the shifting, unreliable functions of memory, mixing various pieces of conversation and time with sub-textual narratives of food, race, heritage, purity, and culture. Shari plans to continue teaching and exhibiting, as well as she has a few upcoming artists residencies, as her time as the AIR the Jacobs Center for the Arts comes to end.

Siqi Wang

With a great passion for design, Siqi (Architecture) has explored digital design and fabrication, photography and virtual reality. Being involved in BCNM has enabled Siqi to broaden her design spectrum, particularly in interaction and interface design. She has taken classes in New Media and Information on these topics and has also begun developed a criticality towards design decisions. In the future, Siqi wishes to practice design in a highly interactive, collaborative, and transdisciplinary manner and become a full-stack designer.