News/Research
16 May, 2022

Congratulating Our Spring 2022 Undergraduate Certificate Recipients

Congratulations to our Spring 2022 Undergraduate Certificate graduates! They played important roles in the BCNM ecosystem, and we are thrilled to have been apart of their new media pursuits here at Cal. We remain in awe of their hardwork and dedication and wish them well in their future pursuits.

Ashley Reed

Ashley Reed receives her Bachelors in Media Studies and American Studies, with a minor in Education. Her thesis explored how media consumption has glorified, gentrified, racialized, feminized, and commodified the Chihuahua in the early 2000s. Ashley received the Eugene Jarvis Scholarship in Media Innovation through the Berkeley Center for New Media. She plans to pursue a career in digital pedagogy.

Jessie Mindel

Jessie Mindel is graduating with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a Certificate in New Media. Her research in the Hybrid Ecologies Lab has sought to create embodied, generative, ambiguous, and narrative media and environments that help people pause to better understand themselves, meaningfully connect with others, and (co-)creatively explore, own, and transform their worlds. Her work spans creativity support tools for reflection on process and identity, agential, sonic congregation places for more-than-human connection through a blurring of "otherness," small-scale modular robotic platforms for affordable tele-embodiment, VR communities, self-subversive short fiction, and urban design for inclusive placemaking. As a product design consultant, mentor, and manager at Berkeley Innovation, she has brought community-centered solutions to Ford, SITELAB, EHDD, and Steelcase, and helped launch initiatives for inclusive design stewardship. She has also interned at Oculus, served as a UGSI for Haas's Creativity and Leadership and the Web Design DeCal, and was awarded a Fellowship from BCNM in 2021. Though these four years have flown by, Jessie is grateful for the life-altering mentorship and interdisciplinary community she has found here. In the fall, Jessie will begin her Master's in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab's Opera of the Future.

Karina Nguyen

Karina is graduating with the Bachelor's in Data Science, minors in Sustainable Design, Public Policy, and a Certificate in New Media. She is coming from Eastern Ukraine and recently lost her home there. Her research seeks to understand ways computer vision, human-computer interaction, and reliable machine learning systems can further open-source investigations on war crimes to pursue justice and other processes. Her practice involves building tools, conducting visual forensics both for journalism and litigation, working with GIS and satellite imagery analysis, visualizing and mapping critical data, experimenting computer vision methods for OSINT, creating art projects, and more. She has been working on projects with Human Rights Center and Berkeley AI researchers. Some of her projects include Rectify tool for visual analysis, AP investigations on Myanmar's war crimes, Architecture as a Device for Violence, After the Strike in Bein Hanoun (Gaza), etc. Karina is actively contributing to human rights investigations in Ukraine now and soon be joining research lab at ETH Zurich and the New York Times.

Mallen Clifton

Mallen Clifton is graduating with B.A.s in English and Mathematics along with the Undergraduate Certificate in New Media. She began her interest in new media by putting together a decal on electronic literature, a class now running in its third year. In 2021, she accepted a UC Berkeley Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to study electronic literature more deeply, and has also presented papers on this topic at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature as well as the Electronic Literature Organization International Conference. At the latter, she presented her undergraduate thesis, which revolves around the connection between memes and electronic literature. In general, she is interested in the intersections of technology and literature, and her writings on this can be found online at places such as Berkeley Fiction Review Magazine and Agora Magazine. She is extremely grateful to the BCNM for nurturing what will certainly be a lifelong academic interest.

Matt Gibson

Matt Gibson is graduating with a B.A. in Media Studies, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Technology, and a Certificate in New Media. During his time as an undergrad, Matt worked at Twitter, Adobe, and ViacomCBS, and served as the President of the Business Careers in Entertainment Club (BCEC). Notable projects include consulting Meta on ways to improve the new user experience for Reels, making it a more accessible and inclusive experience. He plans to bring his interdisciplinary skillset across media, business, and entrepreneurship by pursuing a career at the intersection of tech and entertainment.

Resham Khanna

Resham Khanna is graduating with a B.A. in Cognitive Science and Psychology along with certificates in Entrepreneurship & Technology, Design Innovation, and New Media. Her work has focused on product and game design, including intersections with VR, sleep science, and blockchain. Her focus is on creating meaningful experiences with an intense attention to usability and social impact. Singing opera, painting, dancing/listening to music, taking walks, and dog spotting are some of her favorite activities. She has also received multiple awards, scholarships and grants for her work: Berkeley Engineering Design Scholars, Google DEI Scholar for In/Visible Talks, Stanford Power in Hand Award, Google RARE Creative Leader, and NASA's International Space Settlement Design Competition Runner Up.