DB Bauer is an assistant professor of interactive media and games in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, DB Bauer worked for many years in television, radio, and film production with New Mexico PBS, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, and other freelance outlets and has broad experience in both producing and production, with a primary focus on audio engineering. In addition to media production, DB has a background in digital media preservation for university archival collections. DB draws on this professional background in both previous and current research and teaching, focusing recently on the theoretical and social impact of new media theory and practice, speculative design, hands-on, critical making, and 3D media, particularly 3D media fabrication in both physical and virtual space.

Education:
Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park

Courses taught at DCSI: Pixel Art

Laura Cechanowicz joins the School of Arts, Media and Engineering as an assistant professor, jointly appointed with the graphic information technology program in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Cechanowicz brings a track record spanning immersive media, installation, sound, animation, health, rehabilitation and more.

Education:
Ph.D. University of Southern California

Courses taught at DCSI: Immersive Storytelling

Dr. Gowda is a Faculty Associate at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. His interests include Internet of Things and Full-Stack Cloud Programming. When not at ASU, he is working on his startup that specializes in Full-stack development and IoT consulting and product design.

Education:
2012: PhD in Computer Science. CIDSE ASU.
2005: Bachelor of Engineering, NITK, Surathkal, India.

Courses taught at DCSI: Introduction to Robotics

Suren Jayasuriya is an assistant professor jointly between the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering (ECEE). Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his doctorate in 2017 from the ECE Department at Cornell University, and a bachelor's in mathematics and in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. His research focuses on designing new types of computational cameras, systems, and visual computing algorithms that can extract and understand more information from the world around us.

Education: Ph.D. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University 2017
M.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University 2015
B.S. Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh 2012
B.A. Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh 2012

Courses taught at DCSI: How Can Computers Think?

Stacey Kuznetsov is an assistant professor at the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering at Arizona State University. Her research explores the role of technology in collective efforts to construct knowledge and address issues. Her work applies HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and design methods to the study of current and future systems for science and technology. She develops low-cost tools and bottom-up design methods for citizen science, community activism, and (DIY)biology. She holds a doctorate from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Earlier, she worked for a small startup company (Google). She received a bachelor's from New York University with a double major in Philosophy and Computer Science.

Education: Ph.D. Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
B.A. Philosophy and Computer Science (dual degree), New York University

Courses taught at DCSI: Screen Printing with Active Materials (2017), Solar Oven Competition (2017), Antibiotic-Responsive Bioart (2017)

Byron is an artist, educator and engineer. Byron currently teaches in the Digital Culture program at Arizona State University, specializing in physical computing systems. He has directorial and mentoring roles in the Digital Culture Lounge and Digital Culture Incubator and is pursuing research on expressive robotics. Lahey earned his BFA (Sculpture) from the University of Northern Iowa in 1990, his MFA (Sculpture) from Arizona State University in 1997 and Ph.D in Media Arts and Science from the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University in 2015.

Education: Doctor of Philosophy, Media Arts and Science, School of Arts, Media and Engineering, Arizona State University
Master of Fine Arts, Sculpture, Herberger School of Fine Arts, Arizona State University
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture, College of Humanities, Arts and Sciences, University of Northern Iowa

Courses taught at DCSI: Musical Robots (2017), Autonomous Vehicle Lab (2018)

Robert LiKamWa is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, appointed in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE). LiKamWa heads the Mobile Systems Research Studio, which designs software and hardware systems to raise the performance, efficiency, privacy, and expressiveness of smartphones, tablets, IoT, VR/AR, drones, and other mobile systems. Prior to coming to ASU, LiKamWa completed his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at Rice University in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has also interned at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington and in Beijing, China, Samsung Mobile Processor Innovation Lab in Richardson, Texas, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado.

Education: Ph.D. Rice University
M.S. Rice University
B.S. Rice University

Courses taught at DCSI: Mobile App Development

Loren Olson is a clinical associate professor at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. His research work is in the areas of mixed reality rehabilitation, interaction architecture, and media systems for education. Prior to joining the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, he spent 16 years creating animation and effects for film and television. His awards include eight Rocky Mountain Emmy Awards.

Recently, a focus of his work has been the creation of a tool for peer review in the classroom with David Tinapple. CritViz is an online framework for supporting real-time critique, conversation, and peer ranking of creative work in the classroom.

Loren Olson co-directs the Digital Culture Summer Institute. DCSI is a 3-week summer day program for junior high and high school students. The program engages young students with a variety of creative digital projects that captivate students artistic and technical sides via a series of short project-focused modules.

Education: B.S. Computer Science, Arizona State University 1988

Courses taught at DCSI: Code for Games 2D, Code for Games 3D, 3D Animation

Garth Paine is a composer, scholar and acoustic ecologist. He crosses art-science boundaries with his community embedded work on environmental listening and creative place-making in addition to his environmental musical works and performances. His research drives toward new approaches to acoustic ecology and the exploration of sound as our lived context including the application of VR in health.

Education: Ph.D., RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia 2003. Dissertation: Unencumbered Human Movement in Interactive Immersive Environments. ISBN: 978-1-4452-0457-4 (2009). Supervisor, Professor David Atkinson.


Courses taught at DCSI:Musical Micros

Samuel Peña is an instructor in the ASU School of Music, and founder of AZ Beat Lab, (a local youth development organization focusing on beat making and music production). He graduated from ASU with a Masters in Music Education with a research focus on community and participatory music practices. In the School of Music, he teaches the Urban Dance Music Ensemble and Beatmaking courses. His work is guided by a passion for building relationships through groove-based music and working with students to build happy, healthy communities.

Education: M.M. Music Education, Arizona State University
B.A. Communication, Arizona State University

Courses taught at DCSI: Digital Sound Design, BeatMaking in Ableton Live

Althea Pergakis is the undergraduate education coordinator for the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. Her interests lie in generative media – particularly text and sound, as well as community methods of knowledge acquisition (that’s fancy academic for thinking about Wikipedia a lot). She graduated from ASU with a Bachelors of Art in Digital Culture, with a focus in Media Processing. She also has background in (and passion for!) public libraries and intergenerational technology education.

Courses taught at DCSI: Creative Generative Text!

Connor Rawls is a Research Specialist at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering.

Education: B.A. Digital Culture, Arizona State University


Courses taught at DCSI:Musical Micros

Alejandra Rodriguez Vega is a Media, Arts and Sciences PhD student. Her research is currently focused on working with consumers, designers, and drone users to explore how communities would like to use drones. Her work uses a range of design processes such as design fiction and co-design.

Education: MA Digital Culture. Arizona State University
BA Communication Media. North Carolina State University



Courses taught at DCSI: Making Movies, Make a Green Screen Film, Dub a Film

Kimberlee Swisher is a clinical assistant professor and co-director of the Digital Culture Summer Institute. She teaches and designs curriculum for a variety of classes, including Introduction to Digital Culture, Media Editing, and Computational Thinking. She’s broadly interested in the assessment and careful crafting of technology’s influence on culture and youth, especially at the intersection of play, sound, and embodied experiences; for example, modifying off-the-shelf motion capture gaming devices into unique gestural instruments and installations. In addition to teaching at the university level, she has taught and developed curriculum for several K-12 for several schools and after-school programs in California and Arizona. Outside of work she enjoys making and crafting of all types, eating cookies, and hanging out with her husband and kids while introducing them to as much live music as possible.

Education: M.M. Composition, Interdisciplinary Digital Arts Media and Performance, Arizona State University
B.A. Music, Arizona State University

Courses taught at DCSI: Put your Stamp On The World, Make a Green Screen Film, Musical Trash

Tinapple’s core research questions look at the complex cognitive strategies employed by people at the intersection of technology and work, but the focus has shifted towards designing better tools and systems for teaching and learning. Tinapple uses his classrooms as a natural lab in which new ideas, strategies, and tools can be tested. Prior to studying studio art at Carnegie Mellon, David Tinapple worked in “Cognitive Engineering,” a branch of interface design focused on finding ways to support human cognition, coordination, and performance in complex task domains (intelligence analysis, command and control, health care, human-robot coordination). Tinapple is also part of the team responsible for the design of the Digital Culture degree, a new experimental undergraduate degree program at ASU that aims to bridge the technical and creative mindset, teaching new combinations of skills while using new teaching tools and practices in the classroom. Tinapple is designer and co-creator (with Professor Loren Olson) of CritViz.com, an online tool for teachers and students, designed to support peer-review and critique in classrooms. CritViz started as an experiment in scaling up the traditional art school “crit” to larger sized classrooms (50-100 students), but quickly gained popularity and is now the center of a research project and a startup company. CritViz allows teachers facilitate large scale formative peer review sessions in which students critique, rank, and rate each others work. This goes beyond “peer grading,” towards classroom self-curation, and a search for ways to change the cognitive framework and incentive structure in today’s classrooms. MOOCs are interesting but this research is primarily concerned with the face-to-face classroom, and scaling up the levels of engagement. Why can’t “bigger is better” apply to the classroom?

Education: MFA from Carnegie Mellon University 2007
BFA from The Ohio State University 2003

Courses taught at DCSI: Building Interactive Media Systems, Projection Mapping, Computational Photography

Celia Yang is a Tonmeister, sound artist, and researcher working on expanding broad community engagement with multimedia technologies in interdisciplinary environments by evolving new technical and artistic approaches. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Arizona State University. Her interests focus on acoustic ecology and the emerging fields of immersive ambisonic technologies to encourage increased sonic awareness and build stronger connections with our ecosystem through deeper community engagement with environmental sound. Her research utilizes acoustic ecology sensibilities as a guiding design solution to understand anthropocentric sound challenges. She is currently working on the Environmental Listening project at ASU, which seeks to quantify environmental psychoacoustics metrics to design and manage the acoustics ecosystem with the intention of increasing the well-being of society while addressing the social impact, and ecosystem balance.

Education: M.M. and Advanced Certificate in Tonmeister Studies, NYU 2020
B.M. Berklee College of Music 2017
Courses taught at DCSI: Introduction to Audio Production and Studio Principles, Digital Sound Design