Announcing Our Summer 2025 Undergraduate Research Fellows

Each year, the Berkeley Center for New Media pairs undergraduates with a graduate student mentor, offering them the chance to complete real, graduate level research while at Cal. We are thrilled to announce this semester's Fellows.

Gauri Bahl

Visualizing Crypto-Economic/Ecologic Networks

Gauri is a Computer Science B.A. candidate at UC Berkeley with interests in data analysis, geospatial research, and digital infrastructure. She has worked as a Frontend Software Engineer at the Center for Environmental Design Research, where she developed a public-facing web tool that transforms Excel datasets into structured JSON formats for geographic integration. She holds experience in working with spatial data and geocoding.

Gauri will be working with Lee Crandall. Lee's research project investigates how the practice of “prospecting”—from gold mining to crypto mining—reveals continued legacies of extraction and the reanimation of post-industrial ruins. Using a relational geographies framework, Lee will examine how techno-natures are produced across rural agricultural and wetland ecologies in Silicon Valley, the Caribbean, and the Rust Belt. These regions, now home to proposed crypto-cities and mining operations, often occupy so-called "wastelands" left behind by coal plants and manufacturing industries, and are layered over histories of Indigenous dispossession. The project seeks to trace how these new forms of digital extraction build on and extend older colonial and industrial logics.

Ethan Tam

Designing Embodied Game Experiences for Learning Local Ecological Knowledge

Ethan Tam is a Computer Science B.A. candidate at UC Berkeley with an interdisciplinary background in creative technology, game design, and interactive media. His passion for merging technology and art has led him to work on projects involving AR/VR, generative media, and immersive storytelling. Ethan has developed games in Unity, built interactive art in p5.js, and created gesture-controlled musical interfaces using AI. He has also led teams in producing animated shorts through Autodesk Maya and Blender and has taught Berkeley’s 3D Modeling DeCal. Drawing from personal experiences exploring nature and gardening with his grandmother, Ethan comes with both technical expertise and a deep appreciation for the natural world.

Ethan will be working with Yanyang Yang. Yangyang's research project explores how embodied, playful interactive experiences can foster public understanding of local ecological knowledge and appreciation of native land. Through the design of new narrative forms and game mechanics, the project aims to engage a wide range of participants—including families, individuals with varying mobility levels, and people from diverse cultural backgrounds—in learning about human relationships with native plants and animals. Currently, Yangyang is developing low-fidelity interactive installation prototypes intended for informal learning environments, and is seeking to advance them into higher-fidelity, partially functional prototypes for user testing in May 2025.

Fizzah Kayani

Olfactory Narratives in Cinema

Fizzah is a Data Science and Media Studies B.A. candidate at UC Berkeley. She has contributed to numerous research projects, drawing on her strengths in both writing and analytical thinking. Outside of academics, she runs an Instagram blog and has been involved in debate and drama since high school. Fizzah hopes to pursue a career in the film and media industry after graduation to continue her creative journey. In her free time, she enjoys music, film, and all things cat-related. Her passions include Taylor Swift, TV sitcoms, and coffee.

Fizzah will be working with Arianna Khmelniuk. Arianna's research project examines how scent-related language in film reflects and reinforces power dynamics, ideologies, and binary oppositions—particularly around gender, race, and global culture. In this second phase of the project, the focus shifts toward creating material for art installations based on an archival dataset of olfactory references in both Hollywood and world cinema. This work will contribute new insights to a thesis exhibition at BAMPFA in Spring 2025.