Congratulating Our 2020 Undergraduate Certificate Graduates
Congratulations to our 2020 cohort, who are graduating with the New Media Undergraduate Certificate! These students invested in the new media landscape at Cal, and we're excited to see what new endeavors they undertake in their respective fields.
jazmin calderón torres
Jazmin Calderón Torres is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology focusing on Sustainable Environmental Design and Conservation Resource Studies. 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.
Mahira Dayal
Mahira Dayal is graduating with a B.S. in Environmental Economics and Policy, a B.A. in Media Studies, minors in Journalism and Public Policy and Certificates in Entrepreneurship & Technology and New Media. Over her time at UC Berkeley, she has been involved in editorial and marketing at the Sutardja Center, where she had the chance to immerse herself in the vast startup ecosystem on campus and beyond. Mahira also worked at the Daily Californian, where she served as the section editor for the experimental Snapchat Discover Channel, and contributed to business development and fundraising. After completing New Media coursework and internships at BuzzFeed and Verizon Media, Mahira developed a penchant for journalism and media innovation and will begin a Master's in Journalism in the Fall.
Wesley Deng
Wesley Deng graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science. While at Berkeley, Wesley took graduate level courses in Interface Aesthetics and served as a research assistant to Professor Kimiko Ryokai in the School of Information. He continues to be interested in the interactions between new technology and art.
Vivian Lu
Vivian Lu is graduating with a major in Cognitive Science and Computer Science. She credits BCNM with catalyzing her journey in both independent research and media arts. As a sophomore, she took her first graduate-level courses in New Media (with professor Abigail de Kosnik and professor Kimiko Ryokai). These courses taught her how to critically and skillfully, and how to playfully investigate the world using techniques as wide ranging as sensors/actuators and data visualization. Her new media projects have been varied and include creating collaborations with the Huntington Library and surrealist engineering projects like life-size fluttering butterfly wings.
Arianna Ninh
Arianna Ninh graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science. At BCNM, Arianna was involved with Eric Paulos' Hybrid Ecologies Lab. She also took multiple graduate level design and technology classes, including Critical Making and Tangible User Interfaces. Arianna was also one of BCNM's Undergraduate Research Fellows. She worked with Molly Nicholas on a Cosmetic Computing project to develop novel interfaces that augment self-expression and creativity, while critically examining the existing landscape of interactive technologies. She assisted Molly in developing batteryless wearable displays that can be quickly customized and updated to support dynamic self-expression, wrote software to create a custom visual effects library for display personalization, designed and developed the user interface of an Android app for quickly updating the displays, and integrated the wearable into a variety of form factors for a longitudinal user study. This past Spring, she has been working with Rachel Chen on the Magical Musical Mat, a communication platform that uses touch and music as prosocial resources.
Kevin Pham
Kevin is a graduating senior in Interdisciplinary Studies, interested in unpacking the notion of design. Kevin 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. Following graduation, Kevin will be working for MondoDB as a Product Designer in New York City. In the future, Kevin hopes to attend graduate school in a field related to New Media.
Varda Shrivastava
Growing up in an itinerant family inspired Varda's love for travel, food, art, new cultures and stories. She is fascinated by the intersection of new media, design and technology. While she enjoys problem solving using computing and developing software, she considers it essential to critically analyze the impact of new technologies on society, and at Berkeley enrolled in numerous critical design classes. Varda hopes to explore how new media platforms and innovations can shape social interactions and redefine reality.
Fionce Siow
Fionce Siow is a Media Studies major with certificates in new media and entrepreneurship/technology, and a recipient of BCNM's Eugene Jarvis Scholarship for New Media Innovation. Her strong interest in sociology and business has led her to people-oriented work. While she was at Cal, she advised UC Berkeley's social media strategy, led professional development for an entertainment business organization and consulted for Fortune 500 technology companies. After graduation, Fionce will join the Product Marketing Leadership Development Program at Amazon Web Services.
Bryan Truitt
Bryan is a double major in Art Practice and Cognitive Science. Bryan has previously worked on a series of conceptual garments that use anti-facial recognition tactics to perform as a subversive and embodied form of resistance against surveillance. These garments were initially produced collaboratively for a group project in NWMEDIA C203 Critical Making, and have since expanded to be shown at the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture. He was also a BCNM undergraduate research fellow, working with Julia Irwin on the Mediation of the Human Face. Inspired by hacktivists, pirates, and poets, his work imagines technology as a tool for insurgency, exploring tactics of reclaiming technology from below.
Sonia Uppal
Sonia is a Computer Science major graduating this May with a double certificate in Design Innovation and New Media. On campus, she spearheaded the FEMTech Launch initiative to provide small-group tutoring and create a community of women taking lower division Computer Science classes. She also led a Web Development/Design team for Innovative Design, was an active member of the Accel Scholars, and worked as a GSI for Computer Science 160. She was named a 2020 Jacobs Innovation Catalyst Grant recipient. In her free time, she sang with the University Chorus, spent many hours painting on Memorial Glade, and tinkering in the CITRIS Invention Lab. After graduation, she'll be working as a Software Engineer at Facebook.
Janaki Vivrekar
Janaki Vivrekar is graduating from Cal in 2020 with a B.A. in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, with a concentration in Data Science. In addition to earning the Berkeley Undergraduate Certificate in New Media, she has also completed the Berkeley Certificate in Design Innovation and the Human-Centered Design Course Thread. Intertwined with Janaki’s trajectory as an engineer is her multidisciplinary exploration of communicative experiences via digital interfaces. Her interests range from designing inclusive educational experiences to creating novel sensory interactions in natural and culinary spaces. In her work, Janaki conveys creative expressions of contemporary social and ethical issues related to accessibility. Janaki hopes to continue producing provocative work that exposes novel intersections in art and technology. Janaki is continuing her Berkeley education as a graduate student studying human-computer interaction at the EECS Department, advised by Professor Eric Paulos.
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 has been a Jacobs Innovation Catalyst and also serves as the co-founder and head of design at Dragonfruit Robotics.