Hosted by University of Chicago Human Computer Integration Lab
Opening Plenary
We are proud to kickstart our event with four short keynotes from Ari Melenciano, Constanza Piña Pardo, Gabriella Johnson, and Jingyi Li.
Industry Panel
Our second day features an industry panel with Philippa Ngaju Makobore and Elizabeth Koprucki, focusing on the experiences and contributions of those that shape the future technologies we will see next.
Art Panel
Our third day features an art panel with Ashlyn Sparrow and Snow Xu, focusing on how computing allows new art forms to emerge.
Academia Panel
The closing day features an academia panel with Marshini Chetty and Ellen Yi-Luen Do, focusing on the impact and trajectory of scholars in the field of human computer interaction.
Speakers
Ari Melenciano
She/Her
Artist, Designer
Constanza Piña Pardo
She/Her
Artist, Dance Performer
Gabriella Johnson
She/Her
Ph.D. student at CU Boulder
Jingyi Li
They/Them
Ph.D. student at Stanford University
Philippa Ngaju Makobore
She/Her
Department Head at UIRI
Ashlyn Sparrow
She/Her
Designer
Snow Xu
She/Her
Artist
Ellen Yi-Luen Do
She/Her
Professor at CU Boulder
Elizabeth Koprucki
She/Her
Assistant Director at Fab Lab and Design
Marshini Chetty
She/Her
Assistant Professor at University of Chicago
Ari Melenciano
Speaker at Opening Plenary
Ari Melenciano is an artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, and educator who is passionate about exploring the relationships between various forms of design and the sentient experience. Currently, her research lies at the intersections of human-computer interactive technologies, societal impacts of technology, Black radical imagination, geo-political activism and counterculture, multisensory experiential design, biomimicry, architecture, experimental pedagogy and speculative design. Ari is the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution fostering interdisciplinary innovation at the intersections of art, design, technology, Black culture and activism through collaborative research and practice.
Visual artist, dancer and researcher, focused on experimentation with electronic media, free technologies and DIWO methodologies. Her artistic proposals are presented in various formats integrating dance, installation, sound performance and social practices. Her work reflects on the role of machines in our culture and the human-technological units, questioning the idea of education, capitalism and techno-patriarchy as opposition to open knowledge, autonomy and enhancement of technical manual work. Interested in recycling, hardware hacking, soft-circuits, DIY Antennas, handicrafts synths and electronic wizardry, generates her sound project Corazón de Robota (She-Robot Heart) with synthesizers DIY, where she explores the field of audible and inaudible frequencies as physical perceptions, vibrations as cosmic messages, noise and arrhythmia. Her work has been part of international festivals and spaces as Marginalia+lab, Nuvem y FILE (Brasil), C.C. Simón I Patiño y Kiosko Galería (Bolivia), Ljudmila, RampaLab (Eslovenia), Cerocinco (Paraguay), Laboratorio de juguete, Flexible, Museo del traje, Museo del Juguete, CCBA, FASE (Argentina), PIKSEL (Noruega), Museum of Fine Art Boston, Video Sur II (US), Boom-Chix-A-Boom#6, Perte de Signal, Eastern Bloc (Canadá), Museo de Antioquia, Congreso de Mujeres, Tecnología y Cultura libre, Bogotrax, Plataforma Bogotá, Museo de Arte moderno, Selvatorio, Platohedro (Colombia), Labsurlab, Cosmoaudición CAC, Medialab Cuenca (Ecuador), TECHNE.11 (Uruguay), FIDET, Interface, Deformes, Danzalborde, Tsonami (Chile) La inventoría FabLab, CINNO, La Jauría (Costa Rica) La casa Tomada (El Salvador) Yantra y Festival Gradiente (Guatemala), Cenart, Centro de Cultura Digital, CCEMX, MedialabMX (México) EEII’12, Radiona (Croacia) Pixelache (Finlandia-Estonia), Hangar, Medialab Prado (España) Databaz, Apo33, Emmetrope, Bandits-Mages (Francia) NK project (Alemania) Studio Loos, Sotu fest (Holanda) Festival Open-Close (Polonia), Frowntails (Grecia), Asim’tria (Perú), Crack fest (Italia) Menulab (República Checa), Slut Island, Perte de Signal, Studio XX, Eastern Bloc (Montreal), Iklektic (UK), LIWOLI, Onomatopoesie ,Tresor, Ars Electronica (Austria). She is currently part and founding member of several queer collectives and women’s groups as Híbridas y Quimeras- Women in sound and electronic experimentation, Fuck the soundcheck- Against sexist violence in soundchecks (Festival and label) and she is the manager of the Cyborgrrrls- TechnoFeminist Meeting celebrate every March in Mexico City from 2017. Constanza embodies the philosophy of free culture, electronic anarchy, nomadism and techno-feminism her research on synthesizers handmade and electrotextiles can be seen documented on her blogs.
I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas (proud Texan!). Now living in the beautiful Boulder, Colorado! I graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in the Superhuman Computing Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, under the advisement of Shaun Kane, focusing on research in Human Computer Interaction with a specialization in accessibility and assistive technologies. The majority of my research focuses on fairness, equality, and independence in the area of accessibility. Specifically, I want to dive into how we can empower children to be independent and provide them with tools to be successful academically, focusing on literacy skills.
I do research in human-computer interaction. Most of my work focuses on creativity support tools or fabrication. I really like making things, and enabling others to do the same. I am co-advised by Sean Follmer and Maneesh Agrawala. I did my undergrad at UC Berkeley, where I was advised by Björn Hartmann.
Philippa Ngaju Makobore is the Department Head of the Instrumentation Division at the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI). She has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada, a Professional Certificate in Embedded Systems Engineering from the University of California, Irvine and a Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Engineering with a concentration in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA. Her core expertise is the design of electronic devices that are appropriate and affordable for low resource contexts in healthcare. Under her leadership, the Instrumentation Division has designed and developed award winning medical devices that include a diagnostic tool for pneumonia and an Electronically Controlled Gravity Feed Infusion Set (ECGF) for intravenous delivery of fluids. She was the project lead for UIRI within the UBORA consortium that comprises East African and European partners that have developed an e-infrastructure for the collaborative design and development of open source medical devices. Under the UBORA project the Instrumentation Division designed a portable infant warmer for neonates with hypothermia. She is a member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society (CMBES), IEEE Region 8 Women in Engineering (WIE), founding member of African Biomedical Engineering Consortium (ABEC) and IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Uganda Section.
I am a game designer. I am an experience designer. I am a person whose trajectory in games has been the road less traveled. And, honestly? That in itself has allowed me to think about interactions, designs, and frameworks in a way that’s a little more playful. Now, you may (or may not) be asking, “how is a game designer also an interaction designer?” That is an excellent question! I have had the pleasure of creating socially impactful games and apps for health interventions. I move between interaction design and game design every other day and have come to the conclusion that game design is just a hyper-specialized version of interaction design. Games are built around mechanics, microinteractions a player has with a rule-based system. These interactions combine to create in-game actions and behaviors to which a player will have an affective response. Interactions happen at a variety of scales. At its smallest scales, I focus on microinteractions. As we change scales, these microinteractions move from simple tasks to activities to large-interconnected services (macrointeractions). However, devices are continuously evolving, desktops, laptops, smartphones, virtual reality, augmented reality, and now the internet of things. The world becomes our interface, a possibility space for interactions not only with content, but environments, and other individuals. It is from this space I draw my inspirations. As a game designer I have a passion for creating play-centric experiences while telling deep and meaningful stories about the human condition. I chose this career path due to the nature of the medium being highly immersive and interactive. Developing engaging game mechanics and interactions is what I do best.
Snow Xu creates interactive installations to deliver therapeutic experiences. She focuses on creating body-oriented technology to redefine pleasure, vulnerability, and wellness. She currently works as a program manager & researcher at Open Style Lab to design accessible and inclusive fashion products with the disability communities. She is also a Master of Design Studies candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.Snow’s artworks exhibit at venues including Ars Electronica and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Ellen Yi-Luen Do (Professor at ATLAS Institute & Computer Science) invents at the intersections of people, design and technology. She works on computational tools for design, especially sketching, creativity and design cognition, including creativity support tools and design studies, tangible and embedded interaction and, most recently, computing for health and wellness. She holds a PhD in Design Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor's degree from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. She has served on the faculties of University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2013 to 2016, she co-directed the Keio-NUS CUTE Center in Singapore, a research unit investigating Connected Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments. She enjoys playing the Djembe and performs at festivals and other venues with the Sensua Players.
Elizabeth Koprucki serves as the assistant director, Fab Lab and design at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She manages the Polsky Center’s Fab Lab where she mentors entrepreneurs and researchers through the prototyping process. She oversees the Fab Lab’s programming and staffing and connects Polsky Exchange members with resources on campus and across Chicago.
Marshini Chetty is an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago where she directs the Amyoli Internet Research Lab or AIR lab for short. Prior to this position, she was a research scholar in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University where she directed the Princeton Human Computer Interaction Laboratory. She was an assistant professor at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park where she directed the NetCHI laboratory. In the past, she also completed two post-doctoral research fellowships at ResearchICTAfrica in Cape Town, South Africa and with Prof. W. Keith Edwards at the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology where she was advised by Prof. Rebecca E. Grinter. She started her journey in the USA after she completed her MSc., BSc.(Hons), and BSc. in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (her beautiful home country).
