I am currently a fellow in the New Media Studio at the San Francisco Exploratorium. I recently graduated with an M.S. from the MIT Media Lab, where I worked in the Personal Robots Group. I received my B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science with a concentration in Arts, Media, and Engineering from Arizona State University. I am interested in creating technologies for children that leave room for the children to design and make decisions for themselves, and which support imagination and storytelling. I have worked on motivational home environments, robots with real-time programmable behaviors, remote-communication technologies for distance play, and other things ranging from silly to serious, and often looping back around. I am obsessed with: making things, miniaturized things, repurposing found materials, color, home design, tactile materials and in general the sense of touch, symbolic meaning and coded communication between people, depaysement (that sense of disorientation when encountering something completely new), pockets, good stories, anthropomorphization and characters.

I’m doctoral student in the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab.   Before I came here, I got my bachelors of science in mechanical engineering at Columbia University. I also worked in electronics design and fabrication at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, on the littleBits project. My research investigates materials and techniques for blending electronics with traditional arts and crafts media to create personally meaningful technology.  I’m interested in the questions that arise when we use circuits and programming– i.e. interactivity and logic– to express ourselves. What magical experiences can these techniques and materials enable? What new stories can we tell? And how does this change our aesthetic understanding of modern technology?