Announcing Our Spring 2023 DE & Certificate Cohort
We are thrilled to welcome this Spring's graduate cohort – an amazing group of interdisciplinary scholars from Architecture, Geography, German, Music, Design, and more!
Designated Emphasis
Eda Er
Eda Er, a native of Istanbul, is a composer, sound artist and singer currently based in San Francisco Bay Area. She primarily explores the potential of physicality and narrativity in her music. She enjoys collaborating with dancers, actors, and visual artists and improvising/performing with electronics and vocals.
She has had the pleasure of working as a composer with notable groups, musicians, organizations, and ensembles, including Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Multilarérale, Kugoni Trio, Hermes Ensemble, Hezarfen Ensemble, Atlas Ensemble, Vertixe Sonora, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Nordic Trombone Quartet, Eco Ensemble, Nicolas Isherwood, Christine Cornwell, Tom Collier, IKSV International Theater Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Festival Mixtur, Ikincikat, Mamut Art Project, Clout Theater, A corner in the world and Berika Collective. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the klank.ist, and besides composing and producing, she performs actively with Klank.ist Ensemble, her music duo Esse with Simon Sieger, and solo with electronics and vocals. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition with a Designated Emphasis on New Media at the University of California, Berkeley in the Music Department, CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technologies) and BCNM (Berkeley Center for New Media).
Elizabeth Sun
Elizabeth Sun’s research focuses on filmic, literary, and digital (re)mediations of the migrant and refugee figure in German- and English-language discourses. She is also concerned with the mediatization of refugee discourse across political, legal, and social spheres. Elizabeth’s dissertation includes video works by Ursula Biemann and Hito Steyerl.
She is also analyzing VR documentaries from the Interactive Exhibition Forced from Home, and digital collaboratives such as Weiter Schreiben, which brings refugee poets and artists together with established German-language authors. Another main interest of Elizabeth’s is AI- and machine- generated texts, specifically poetry and prose, and how this emerging practice calls for a re-examination of our practices of
close-reading and pedagogy.
Sophia Perez
With roots in the California Bay Area and the Mariana Islands, Sophia Perez is dedicated to using film as a way to navigate cultural divides and advocate for environmental justice across the Pacific. She earned her BA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley in 2015 and is a first year doctoral student now in Geography, in the fields of Critical Environments and Racial Geographies, with interests in digital media, environmental justice movements, and indigeneity.
Wan Nurul Naszeerah
Wan Nurul Naszeerah (she/her) is a Doctor of Public Health student, seeking to advance her capabilities in incorporating digital media into the design of public health interventions. She is interested in using social media as a platform for both public health surveillance ("social listening") and public health information dissemination, particularly in the context of vaccine confidence within the Malay-speaking communities of Southeast Asia. As a native Malay speaker, I am aware that online health misinformation is far more prevalent in the Malay language compared to the English language. Additionally, high social media penetration rates have been observed across countries in which the Malay-speaking communities live. The role of vaccine confidence, which is defined as the trust in vaccines, vaccine providers, and the policies governing vaccinations within a community, has often been dismissed in the design of vaccination campaigns.
Graduate Certificate
Hae-Sung Park
Hae Sung Park is a Masters in Design candidate seeking to expand their knowledge of emerging new media and technology. Hae Sung graduated the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) before joining Samsung, where they worked on the hardware development and design of various products. Hae Sung is interested in calm technology, where information is delivered to users' peripherals according to levels of urgency or importance, and context-aware implicit inputs/output rather than typing and touch.
Jeremy Chen
As an engineering and architecture student, Jeremy is passionate about exploring the intersection of technology and the natural world, and creating designs that promote sustainability, ecological awareness, social connection, and a deeper understanding of the world around us. Jeremy aims to leverage computational design and digital fabrication to create designs that beautiful, functional, and deeply connected to the environment. Jeremy is particularly interested in incorporating principles of nature-inspired design and design-inspired nature, and the possibilities of material ecology and bioprinting.
Jordan Williams
Jordan Williams (She/Her) is a Master's of Public Health candidate with a concentration in health and social behavior. Her current research interests include addressing the social determinants of health, health equity, and storytelling for behavior change. She is passionate about finding innovative and effective ways to engage communities and improve their health outcomes. She plans on using new media to develop interactive and immersive experiences for health behavior change. She is inspired by immersive VR experiences such as Carne y Arena, remote immersive theatre, and site-specific experiences.
Karithika Baiju
Karthika is a Master of Design student, with professional experience in Software Engineering and undergraduate experience in Electronics Engineering. She is interested in reimagining the interaction between humans and technology. She is a huge believer that our focus on screens is slowly killing us. She is also a passionate new media artist and creative coder who is getting started in the field of Interactive art installations. Her art is often focused on highlighting the subtle relationships between humans and nature, giving nature a powerful voice, and emphasizing the need for more than just human-centered design. Before she made the decision to switch to design full time, she worked as a Software Engineer at Microsoft for 4 years. She loves to pant and her medium is oil.
Shiyan Liu
Shiyan Liu is an Architecture graduate student fascinated by the intersection of architectural design and new technology. To deepen their understanding of the possibilities and limitations of new media, Shiyan has taken Locative Media, which exposed them to diverse theories and approaches that have been studied in the field. This class in particular has inspired them to work towards creating innovative and socially responsible approaches to new media and architecture.
Tiare Ribeaux
Tiare Ribeaux is a Kānaka Maoli filmmaker and artist. Her artwork and films disrupt conventional storytelling methods by employing magical realist explorations of spirituality, labor, and the environment to critique both social and ecological imbalances. Ribeaux’s work traverses between the mundane and dreamworlds - creating stories around transformation and how our bodies are inextricably linked to land and water systems. Her films use visual narrative and components of speculative fiction and fantasy to reimagine both our present realities and future trajectories of healing, lineage, place and belonging. She integrates immersion within community, ancestral/personal narratives, and Hawaiian cosmology into her films. She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership including the Sundance Native Lab Fellowship, Indigenous Film Fund, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the NEA, among others.
Xiaodi Chang
Xiaodi Chang is a candidate in the Masters in Architecture program. With formal training in interior design, paired with architectural studies, Xiaodi is looking for an opportunity to broaden experiments for arts, spaces, and digital visualizations. Xiaodi obtained their Bachelor of Arts degree at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. They are currently taking ARCH 229: Space and Media in Immersive Environments, in which they use Unity to accelerate an understanding of space and how virtual space interacts with people.
Youheng Li
Youheng Li’s design practice centers on designing for vulnerable groups and social issues. Previous projects include the revitalization and recognition of indigenous Australian culture and social housing for marginalized groups in major Chinese cities. Previously, Youheng Li has worked in an architecture firm in Sydney, where they visualized designs through VR headsets, and were intrigued by digital technology’s possibilities to revolutionize the way we design built environments. Youheng has taken a slew of design courses at Berkeley, including Tangible User Interfaces and Product Design Studio, in which the final project delivered a glove with gamification features aimed at mitigating the effects of arthritis. Youheng is now interested in further exploring computational design and its implications on assistive technology for the disadvantaged. Youheng also works as a user interface designer for startups and recently redesigned the homepage of an education startup that provides services to black high school students in Atlanta. The design decreased the drop off rate and helped users to understand key information more efficiently.