News/Research

Announcing Our Spring 2020 Graduate Cohort

30 Mar, 2020

Announcing Our Spring 2020 Graduate Cohort

Image: Jingran Chu.

We are thrilled to welcome this Spring's graduate cohort – a stellar group of interdisciplinary scholars from Architecture, Art Practice, City Planning, Ethnomusicology, and Information!

Designated Emphasis

Jon Turner
Jon Turner is pursuing a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology. His research focuses on relationships between musicians and music technology in popular and experimental music practices in the United States and São Paulo, Brazil. He explores musical creativity by examining the connection of media technology to sound, image, and aesthetic production. Media discourses and the changing nature of music circulation impact the ways artists create and listeners engage with sound. He aims to investigate how creative processes are mediated by the materiality, economics, poetics, and cultural politics of technology.

Certificate

Jingran Chu
Jingran Chu is pursing a Masters of Architecture and is a freelance concept artist. She is interested in building fictitious worlds for the entertainment industry and exploring how could architects affect games and films. Her project, 'Fairytale,' was her first entry into the world of interdisciplinary creations. She combined her expertise as an architect and a freelance artist to explore the future of AR and VR.

Emily Gui
Emily Gui is a pursing an MFA in Art Practice. Her interdisciplinary and experimental work explores the depths of human experience in constructed space, focusing on the nuances of our relationships with objects. As a printmaker, she considers multiplicity and the distribution of images and information as they relate to our rapidly changing relationships with technology. Her most recent work in sculpture and installation attempt to slow the viewing process, interrupt the everyday and reframe the ordinary. Questioning the space between utility, art and waste, Emily often utilizes discarded functional objects that hold, touch, and interact with human bodies.

Michelle Hwang
Michelle Hwang is pursuing a Masters in the School of Information. She is a User Experience designer who specializes in learning and collaboration through empathetic design. She proactively studies how emerging technologies forge novel means of expression from multidisciplinary and global perspectives. She receieved a Bachelors in Cognitive Science and Psychology from UC Berkeley.

Janet Lê
Janet Lê is pursuing a Master of City Planning in the College of Environmental Design, concentrating in Urban Design. She's interested in utilizing media and design as a tool for informed decision-making and the creation of democratic public spaces. Her goal is to advocate for the integration of new media into the process of comprehensive planning in order to preserve and promote cultural histories in public spaces, using design as a tool to foster social and environmental justice within these spaces. Her research interests lie at the convergence of planning, public policy, and placemaking with media technologies to find sustainable solutions for urban challenges in equitable and meaningful ways.

Bowen Wei
Bowen Wei is pursing a Masters in the School of Information. She works to design desirable and feasible products and services for users and a distinct and pleasurable user experience. Her dream is to leverage her design and technical skills with her diverse cultural background to create appealing technology and themed entertainment. She received her Bachelors from the National University of Singapore.

Fang Xu
Fang Xu is pursing a Masters of Landscape Architecture in the College of Environmental Design. He is inspired to break the limits of design. He's interested in blurring the lines between architecture and contemporary art. He also works as a part-time portrait photographer and travel film maker. He recieved his Bachelors from Southwest Jiaotong University.