News/Research

Announcing our 2019 Undergraduate Cohort

19 Nov, 2019

Announcing our 2019 Undergraduate Cohort

Please join us in welcoming our 2019 cohort of Undergraduate Certificate in New Media students!

jazmin calderón torres

jazmin calderón torres is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. jazmin is interested in building capacity to utilize skills of design innovation and new media to creatively engage issues at the intersections of data bias, environmental racism, climate chaos, and food apartheid. Hoping to reimagine systems collapse and support the construction of tangible alternative future imaginaries, jazmin is involved in numerous new media projects including Lead to Life and the Peoples Alchemy Lab.

Resham Khanna

Resham Kahnna is a Psychology and Cognitive Science student interested in the intersection between science, art, technology, and social impact. Resham is an undergraduate researcher in Eric Paulos’ Hybrid Ecologies Lab, where he works on a project involving Creative Documentation Practices. He has also served as a teaching assistant for IEOR 185, Emerging Technologies and Social Impact, where he taught contract coding, business strategy, entrepreneurial thinking, and design practices..

Jonathan Lansang

Jonathan Lansang is a Bachelor of Arts candidate in Mechanical Engineering, where he has worked on aerodynamics, UAV control theory, fluid mechanics, and material behaviors, among other topics. In the Berkeley Flow Lab as an undergraduate researcher, Jonathan has co-authored a publication quantifying degenerative effects of fluid cavitation in crepitus and designed a 4-axis gimbal in order to accurately rotate an X-ray detector using linear stage motors. He has also worked for the Boeing Company in design.

Jessie Mindel

Jessie Mindel is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major, who has taken a suite of new media classes on campus already, from across the disciplinary spectrum, including bioinspired design and human happiness building. Jessie has also served as a software engineering intern at Facebook University and a product design consultant for Berkeley Innovation. Jessie was also a teaching assistant in the ever popular web design decal and a co-founder for the Girls Who Code club. Previous projects include an analog XR walking experience and prototyping a social media network designed to deepen connections.

Kevin Pham

Kevin Pham is an interdisciplinary studies major interested in unpacking the notion of design. Kevin has already led a decal through BCNM titled ‘Beyond Design Thinking,’ in which students explored how design has shaped media forms, and what the implications of those forms have had on our society. Kevin has also taken numerous graduate level courses at the center, from the History and Theory of New Media to Technologies of Identification.

Mehak Sharma

Mehak Sharma is a Bioengineering and Public Policy double major, interested in the fields of design and virtual communities. Having undertaken coursework in bio-inspired design and artificial intelligence, Mehak is interested in building capacity in the social impact of technologies. Mehak has worked as a data analytics intern in London and as an undergraduate researcher in the Holmes lab, helping to develop an algorithm for protein sequencing, utilizing techniques from machine learning, statistical linguistics, phylogenetics, and web development to obear on the interpretation and analysis of genomic data.

Lian Song

Lian Song is a Data Science major, who co-led the popular new media decal Beyond Design Thinking. Lian has been a product design intern at Dropbox and IBM, and was the design director at Berkeley’s incubator Skydeck. Lian has taken numerous new media critical theory classes and is interested in philosophy & critical theory, queer(ing) bodies, new media, and design ethics — particularly broad role in forming contemporary socio-technical discourse — and the theories of subjectivity that undergird design practice.

Sonia Uppal

Sonia Uppal is a Computer Science major, who has already been heavily involved in new media, taking our popular Critical Making and Tangible User Interfaces graduate classes, where she has been able to marry her passions for CS with her creativity, design, and social agenda. Hoping to use technology as a platform for social good, she founded Pi á la Code, an initiative to teach underprivileged teens in rural India how to code, via a series of workshops in python and Web frameworks through Raspberry Pi. Sonia has also served as an undergraduate student instructor for User Interface Development and Design, and is the FEMTECH director, the first Berkeley tech club for women across all majors to promote gender diversity and inclusion in engineering.

Pancham Yadav

Pancham Yadav, a dual major in Cognitive Science and Data Science, is a product designer interested in the democratization the internet offers. Pancham’s courses in New Media, from Critical Practices to Designing Emerging Technologies, and his literature review HCI research for the Berkeley Institute of Design have introduced a criticality to his discourse that he hopes to further develop. Pancham also serves as the co-founder and head of design at Dragonfruit Robotics.

Rex Zhang

Rex Zhang is a Bachelors of Science candidate in Environmental Economics and Policy. In China, Rex served as president of the Hangzhou Broadcasting Union, and founded the Media and Leadership Summit, which sought to envision ethical leadership in the age of new media. Rex was also a co-founder of the Sexuality and Gender Alliance and the Jean Miller Resource Room for Women, Gender, and Sexuality.