Category: People

IDM Faculty, Staff and Students

  • Regine Gilbert

    Regine Gilbert

    Regine Gilbert is a user experience designer, educator, and international public speaker with over 10 years of experience working in the technology arena. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place—one that starts and ends with the user.

    Regine is an Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, teaching User Experience Design to students in the Integrated Digital Media Program. In addition, she teaches the part time User Experience Design course at General Assembly

    Some of the companies Regine has had the pleasure of working for include Disney, JP Morgan, Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts, Ralph Lauren, Columbia University and Vitamin Shoppe.

    For more information see

    https://reginegilbert.com/

  • Kat Sullivan

    Kat Sullivan

    Brooklyn-based artist Kat Sullivan exists at the intersection of movement and technology. After earning her Bachelors in Computer Science and Dance at Skidmore College, she worked as a software engineer and free lanced with various dance companies in the Boston area. At NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), she developed a practice around creative coding, live performance, machine learning, motion capture, and other emerging technologies. She has presented works at Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, Pioneer Works, SXSW, 14th Street Y, and the Liberty Science Center, and was selected for residencies by Ponderosa Dance, Yale, NYU ITP and Pioneer Works. Currently she is a Visting Industry Assistant Professor at NYU Tandon’s Integrated Digital Media program, teaching courses on motion capture, live performance, and programming.

    For more information see

    http://katsully.com

  • Kathleen McDermott

    Kathleen McDermott

    As an artist, Kathleen McDermott has created numerous absurdist wearable and robotic interfaces which she documents through video and performance and exhibits internationally. Completed projects have included a dress that produces a cloud of fog when the wearer is feeling stressed, and a mass of robots designed to take her houseplants into the sun. Her practice includes material experimentation using processes such as mold making, 3-D printing and laser cutting conductive materials, to expand the possibilities of soft interface design. Conceptually, she is interested in how concepts of identity, telepresence and care, informed by intersectional feminism, fashion, and media theory, can impact a broader dialogue about how technology will relate to our bodies in the future.

    McDermott is currently collaborating with a team of researchers across NYU and University of Colorado, to develop and test custom wearable hardware and curricular content for use in creative education contexts such as dance and theater, with the goal of broadening participation in STEM fields, particularly among underrepresented communities

    TOOLS + MEDIUMS OF PRODUCTION
    Film/Video, Wearables, Physical Computing, Digital Fabrication/ Prototyping, Media Art, Performance, Solar and Renewable Energy, Product Design

    METHODS + APPROACHES
    Digital Storytelling, Participatory Design, Speculative Design, Critical Design

    TOPICS + THEMES
    Media Studies, Gender Theory, Human Computer Interaction, Education, Cybernetic Theory, Posthumanism

  • Benedetta Piantella

    Benedetta Piantella

    Benedetta is a designer turned educator and humanitarian technologist. She was involved in international development projects for the past fifteen years, ever since her experience of surviving the Tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004 and organizing relief efforts from the ground. She has been teaching for almost two decades in different disciplines and to different age groups, from STEM and Robotics courses to K-12 students to Ideation & Prototyping, HCI, Physical Computing and Global Engineering classes to undergraduate and graduate students.

    She founded two R&D companies focused on producing sustainable solutions to global problems and through partnerships with Governments, large international organizations such as the UN and UNICEF, research institutions such as The Earth Institute at Columbia University and multiple NGOs, she has designed, prototyped and deployed projects in many countries such as the Netherlands, United States, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

    Benedetta was recently Technologist in Residence at Cornell Tech and worked in the Connected Experiences Lab and Social Technologies Lab working on HCI research about physical resource sharing, remote visual awareness and technology tools for underserved communities. Previously she covered the position of Technology Architect for the Earth Institute and the Quadracci Sustainable Engineering Lab at Columbia University, working on projects focused on shared solar micro-grids and 24/7 water kiosks for the Millennium Villages Project.

    Her design research practice focuses on applying participatory design methods, systems thinking and user-centered design towards the design and implementation of resilient networks, IoT devices, real-time monitoring systems and distributed infrastructure, to insure equitable access to life-sustaining resources. Benedetta is an Open Source advocate and is currently teaching and conducting research at NYU Tandon in the Integrated Digital Media Program.

    Website

    TOOLS + MEDIUMS OF PRODUCTION
    Physical Computing, Digital Fabrication/ Prototyping, Web & Network Technologies, Media Art, IoT, Solar and Renewable Energy, User Experience, Product Design

    METHODS + APPROACHES
    User-Centered Design, Social Practice, Participatory Design, Citizen Science, Cosmotechnics, Community-based

    TOPICS + THEMES
    User Experience, Civic Technology / Service Design, Sustainability, Social Justice, Human Computer Interaction, Social Practice, Education, Cybernetic Theory, Systems Design, low-tech

     

  • Scott Fitzgerald

    Scott Fitzgerald

    Materially, Scott works with code, electronics, networks, visual and aural media. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Middle East, China, Hong Kong, and throughout Europe. He has installed site-specific work at the University of Oslo and in New York City’s Times Square. Scott was a researcher with the audio art group Locus Sonus, the head of documentation for the open source Arduino platform, and a partner with Lightband Studios. He has lived in France, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and is based in Brooklyn, NY. He would like more cats in his life and fewer cars in the world.

    Website

    Academic Director IDM / Industry Associate Professor
    Director of Online Programs
    Global Network Arts Professor 
    Technology, Culture and Society
    shf220@nyu.edu

    (646) 997 3619

    TOOLS + MEDIUMS OF PRODUCTION
    Physical Computing, Creative Coding, Network Technologies, Media Art, IoT, Machine Learning, Physical Interface Design, Light, Projection

    METHODS + APPROACHES
    Data Visualization / Data-Driven Investigation, Speculative Design, Critical Design, Algorithmic Design, Generative Design, Media Art, Digital Art, Digital Design

    TOPICS + THEMES
    Media Studies, Education, Human Computer Interaction, New Materialism, Posthumanism, Humor, Absurdity, Hacking

  • IDM Alum Diana Castro Featured for her Mindful Accessories and Design Label Ser Paraiso

    IDM Alum Diana Castro Featured for her Mindful Accessories and Design Label Ser Paraiso

    Diana Castro Sitting Cross Legged and Smiling  Photo by Itzel Alejandra Martinez for Remezcla
    Diana Castro Sitting Cross Legged and Smiling Photo by Itzel Alejandra Martinez for Remezcla

    Diana Castro an NYU IDM 2015 Alum has been doing amazing work in design, music, and tech. Her idea for Ser Paraiso came about when she created a music box for meditation as her thesis at IDM. That’s when she started Ser Paraíso — formerly known as Magic Objects (2013) — as a project to make sound objects for spiritual purposes.

    Moon Soft Synth a soft circuit synthesizer handmade with fabric, yarn, mirrors and pompons by Diana Castro in collaboration with Javier Molina
    Moon Soft Synth a soft circuit synthesizer handmade with fabric, yarn, mirrors and pompons by Diana Castro in collaboration with Javier Molina

    She works in digital spaces where she designs web apps for music making with the MusEDLab (NYU Music Experience Design Lab) as well as physical ones, for example with the electronic textile synthesizers she creates for her project Mágico Real, which explores shamanism, ritual, and identity through performance, new media and technology.

    Paper MIDI made in collaboration in collaboration with MusEDLab and Novalia UK
    Paper MIDI made in collaboration in collaboration with MusEDLab and Novalia UK

    Her project Magico Real was recently featured in a remezcla article where they discuss her history with art, music, and design. Her work threads along multiple mediums but always centers around her own embrace of healing, spirituality, and a desire to help people connect with their higher selves.

    Diana Castro's notepads and notebooks Photo by Itzel Alejandra Martinez for Remezcla
    Diana Castro’s notepads and notebooks
    Photo by Itzel Alejandra Martinez for Remezcla

    She has installation, album covers, and mixtapes that she uses to explore her creativity. You can find those works and more on her at her website: https://panali.cc/. or on her instagram.