I am an assistant professor in the Art + Design department at Northeastern University. My research aims to create impact on environmental challenges through local, community-engaged design practices that take seriously the complexities of social, cultural, and ecological systems and the possibilities of collective action. As part of this work, I design experiences around making and making sense of environmental data. I also explore novel embodied ways to engage with information and contribute to design, human-computer interaction, and data physicalization communities. I teach graduate and undergraduate courses on information design, interaction design, and experience design.
I received my PhD (2020) and my SM (2014) from the MIT Media Lab. My dissertation explored ways to use art and technology to engage communities with local water quality, including (1) projects using data physicalizations to represent water quality violations from local oil storage facilities, (2) projects building tools to visualize water quality data on site and in real time, and (3) projects to bring people into public blue green spaces to create art together. For my master's thesis, I developed "Data Experiences" from public health data that re-imagined how people interact with information by taking it off the screen and putting it into the physical world. These projects also consider the social role of data and the ways in which measuring can become a mechanism for intervention.
Prior to joining the Media Lab, I spent five years as a researcher at Silent Spring Institute investigating environmental causes of diseases including cancer and asthma. I also served as a Peace Corps volunteer and received a B.A. in applied mathematics and religion from Bowdoin College. My research builds from my interdisciplinary background, my textile work, and my experience with movement based practices.
You can find my full CV here. You can reach me at first initial dot last name at northeastern dot edu.
