Our Team

Mallika Bose is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Associate Dean of Research, Creative Activity and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State. In this role she supports and promotes arts and design research/creative activity and is an advocate for expanding the role of arts/design research in higher education and society. Graduate education is at the core of the research enterprise in higher education, and she works actively to diversify the student body and the types of research/creative activity undertaken in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State. Mallika is committed to making visible the role of arts and design in equitable development, human flourishing and the responsible stewardship of our planet.

Mallika is trained as an architect specializing in Environment-Behavior Studies. She is interested in how the built environment impacts human behavior especially for disadvantaged groups. Her research areas include: Built Environment and Active Living/Healthy Eating; Public Scholarship and Community Engaged Design and Planning; Gender and Development; and Design/Planning Pedagogy. Her scholarship has been published in Landscape Journal, Habitat International, International Development and Planning Research, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Journal of Urban Design among others.  She co-edited a book on community-engaged teaching/scholarship titled – Community Matters: Service-learning in Engaged Design and Planning – which received the 2015 Great Places Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). She served on the board of EDRA for several years and was the Chair of the EDRA Board of Directors in 2012-13. In 2016 Mallika joined the National Advisory Board of Imagining America – Artists and Scholars in Public Life. She co-directs the Collective of Publicly Engaged Designers (CoPED), an initiative of Imagining America.

Soul Brown is a research administrator, doctoral candidate, youth worker, writer, creative practitioner, and social justice educator. Presently, she directs the RISD Research office at Rhode Island School of Design, where she promotes faculty and graduate students’ generation of new knowledges and ways of making through the conduct of sponsored, interdisciplinary, transformative research. Soul also is a PhD candidate in an interprofessional educational leadership and healthcare administration program at Pacific University (Oregon). Her research focuses on historical and contemporary experiences of Black student success in the United States through the frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Community Cultural Wealth. She employs qualitative methodologies of Voice Scholarship and Phenomenology to explicate counternarratives of BIPOC schooled experiences. This fall she is co-teaching a course on the Pathology of Race and Racism in Healthcare.

Prior to joining RISD (Riz-dee) in July 2020, Soul directed Grants Development for Massachusetts Bay Community College. She successfully tripled MassBay’s grants income, helping to transform the college’s ability to meet the needs of constituents through implementing new academic programs, providing faculty and students with research opportunities, and spurring investments in facilities and equipment.

Soul has over three decades of experience leading innovative nonprofits and creative projects that focus on BIPOC community and youth development, cultural arts, and social justice. She earned her BA in English from Tufts University and Master in Public Administration from Framingham State University.

Ivica Ico Bukvic is a discipline-agnostic creative exploring and building creative technologies for a better tomorrow. His current research trajectories include low-latency synchronous musical co-creation over distance, aural immersion and broadening of human cognitive bandwidth in automotive scenarios, large-scale digital signal processing, including spatialization, and data sonification, and enhancing K-12 education through integrated technology-mediated experiential learning.

Bukvic received doctorate from the University of Cincinnati (2005) in computer music and is currently working at Virginia Tech as the inaugural director of the Creativity + Innovation (C+I) interdisciplinary initiative and the co-director of the Human Centered Design (HCD) individualized interdisciplinary PhD program, a professor in Creative Technologies in Music in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design’s (AAD) School of Performing Arts (SOPA), the founder and director of the Digital Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio (DISIS) and World’s first Linux-based Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork)–an ensemble that was in 2015 recognized by a2ru as one of the six transdisciplinary exemplars in US, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) Senior Fellow, and a member of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI) with a courtesy appointment in the department of Computer Science. His past administrative experience also includes a temporary appointment as the interim Assoc. Dean for Research, Graduate Studies, and the Director for Diversity and Inclusion for the Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences.

Since joining Virginia Tech in 2006, Bukvic received over $1.8M in external funding from industry and government agencies, including Google, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research (a part of US Department of Defense). As a staunch life-long practitioner of and advocate for an integrative approach to education, Bukvic’s work relevant to the a2ru’s mission includes developing custom-tailored Higher Ed frameworks for the implementation, integration, assessment, and affirmation of industry-relevant interdisciplinary education and scholarship. In his most recent role as the C+I director, he has been working with over hundred faculty, staff, and students on developing a comprehensive interdisciplinary curricular pipeline (undergraduate to PhD) that focuses on the impactful technology-mediated integration of arts, design, and engineering.

ico.bukvic.net

Dan Cavanagh is a composer and pianist who has garnered numerous awards in both areas. In 2023 he was awarded 2nd Prize in the American Prize for Composition in the Wind Symphony/Band Category. He received a 2009 gold medal prize from the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition, and in 2017 he was awarded a Special Judges’ Citation in the American Prize for Chamber Music Composition. As a composer Cavanagh has been commissioned to write for Latin Grammy-winning AfroBop Alliance, the legendary Patti LaBelle, and a wide range of classical and jazz performers across North America and Europe. He has released five jazz recordings as a leader, including Pulse and Heart of the Geyser on Seattle’s OA2 Records, and two recordings with Minnesota-based vibraphonist Dave Hagedorn, Horizon and 20 Years. His most recent recording with James Miley and John Hollenbeck was released on Japan’s S/N Alliance Records in November 2022 to critical acclaim. His music can be heard on many other recordings both classical and jazz. His film scoring work can be heard in the documentary The Beat Hotel, a film exploring the hotel in Paris in the late 1950s and early 1960s where the beat poets, led by Allen Ginsberg, lived and created much of their famous work.

Cavanagh continues to be commissioned and programmed around the world, with recent performances by the Dallas Wind Symphony, the UT Arlington Wind Symphony, bassoonist Laura Bennett Cameron, duality (Vanessa Sielert and Catherine Anderson), Tracy Cowden and Tabatha Easley, the John Brown Big Band, and many more. Cavanagh’s compositions for wind symphony and saxophone/piano are published by Murphy Music Press, and his works for jazz big band are published by UNC Jazz Press, Sierra Music Publications, and E-Jazz Lines.

Cavanagh has performed extensively in North America and Europe as a pianist, and he has also performed in Asia and Central America. He has appeared in concert with Grammy-winners Irma Thomas, Adonis Rose, and Joe McCarthy and a wide number of jazz artists across the world. He has been a finalist in the EuropaFest Jazz Contest in Bucharest, Romania, and in the Jacksonville Jazz Festival Piano Competition. Cavanagh is the Pamela O. Hamel/Board of Advisors Director of the Mead Witter School of Music and Professor of Composition and Jazz Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to his time at UW-Madison he held numerous appointments at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he served for eighteen years. From 2015-2020, he served as the Co-Chair of Region VI for the Society of Composers, Inc., an international organization dedicated to new and contemporary music and composers. Cavanagh serves as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Dallas Winds, a five-time Grammy nominated professional Wind Symphony, and serves on the boards of the Madison Symphony Orchestra at the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Oṣubi Craig is a multi-talented and accomplished African Diasporic percussionist, administrator, engineer, arts presenter, and arts advocate. Oṣubi brings a great deal of experience and energy to his role as inaugural director of the recently launched Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship (CAME) in the College of the Arts at the University of Florida (UF). As the center’s director, he brings together faculty, artists, and community organizers from around the world to more broadly connect, collaborate, and create. In particular, Oṣubi has supported the center’s Maker in Residence Qudus Onikeku in developing his Atunda project. Atunda seeks to use AI technology to build a database of dance movement on blockchains to protect the IP rights of African Diasporan artists and ensure they are paid equitably when their art and works are commodified. Atunda is one example of the exponential possibilities of interconnected networks that CAME endeavors to cultivate and accelerate. A second example is CAME’s work with artists, technologists, and entrepreneurs around equitable AI (AI4Afrika Symposium). As a third-generation percussionist growing up in Brooklyn, NY, Oṣubi was immersed in the emerging African Diasporic cultural arts movement. His passion for science and technology led him to earn a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering while minoring in Jazz Studies at Florida A&M University (FAMU). Oṣubi went on to earn an M.A. in Arts Administration from Florida State University. As an artist, he worked for major performing arts organizations, such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and National Dance Institute’s Arts in Education programs; as a lead drummer, for Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble (Philadelphia, PA); and as a teaching artist, for the Philly Pops (Philadelphia, PA), New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark, NJ), Lincoln Center Institute (New York, NY), and Urban Bush Women (Brooklyn, NY). In his 20+ years of experience as an arts administrator, Oṣubi has developed and implemented programming, cultivated relationships, established collaborative partnerships, crafted shared visions and strategic directions, and worked effectively with arts programs and organizations nestled under the umbrella of higher education institutions. Oṣubi’s diverse skill sets have served him in a variety of roles such as: Construction Project Manager and Research Coordinator for the College of Engineering, Sciences, Technology and Agriculture at FAMU; Director of Grants and Sponsored Research/HBCU Title III at Florida Memorial University; and Director of Arts and Cultural Affairs at Polk State College. Oṣubi additionally served at Virginia State University as Special Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives and Director of Government Relations. Most recently at UF, Oṣubi chaired the working group on Access, Equity, and Inclusion as Functional Catalysts for the College of The Arts Meta Strategy and strategic planning process. Currently he serves as the college representative on several campus-wide working groups: the UF Equitable AI group, the Advanced AI Faculty Learning Community, and the AI and Society workgroup.

Andrew Davis is Founding Dean of the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. His work there has focused on integrating interdisciplinary training into the curriculum and on establishing the arts as a leading force for social engagement and community impact. He is a strong advocate for the value of an arts and a liberal-arts education; the benefits of international study-abroad opportunities for students; and the opportunity for the arts to actively engage and transform universities and their cities. A music theorist by training and a long-time board member of the Texas Society for Music Theory, he has published and lectured widely on opera and instrumental music of the Romantic and late-Romantic periods. He is the author of Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini’s Late Style (Indiana University Press, 2010) and Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms (Indiana University Press, 2017).

Davis served previously as Director of the Moores School of Music and as Associate Dean of the Honors College, both at the University of Houston, and he was co-chair of the university-wide committee that brought a chapter of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa to the University of Houston. He was the recipient of a university-wide teaching excellence award in 2010; he is a co-founder and organizer of the Council of Texas Arts Deans; and in Houston he serves on the boards of the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association of Greater Houston, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Houston Arts Alliance. He is President of the Board for Workshop Houston.

Davis holds the Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University. He was appointed to the University of Houston faculty in 2003, and he holds the Cullen Foundation Endowed Chair.

Maryrose Flanigan is the executive director of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), where she oversees a network of universities which are committed to advancing arts-based and interdisciplinary research, practice, and teaching in higher education. She serves on a presidential advisory group for the arts initiative at a2ru’s headquarters at the University of Michigan and is part of the advisory cohort for the Imagining America’s Leading and Learning Initiative: Shifting Institutional Culture to Fortify Public Scholarship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining the staff at a2ru, she served in various roles at the National Endowment for the Arts: as division coordinator for Literature and Arts Education, as a specialist for the creative writing and translation fellowships; and served as program manager for national programs Poetry Out Loud and the NEA Big Read. She has also served as associate editor for Office of Communications and Public Affairs (OCPA) at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); and associate director for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). Maryrose has an M.F.A. in poetry from American University.

Tamara L. Falicov is the inaugural dean of the UMKC School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dean Falicov comes to UMKC from the University of Kansas, where she was an associate dean in Arts, Humanities and Area Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Falicov is the author of two books: Latin American Film Industries and The Cinematic Tango: Contemporary Argentine Film, with a co-edited book forthcoming. Her research interests have ranged from Latin American film studies and film festival research to assisting medical researchers in understanding language and culture in the treatment of Latinx patients and families. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego.

Lisa DuRussel, RLA, LEED AP, ASLA has a unique background as an educator,  landscape architect, urban ecologist, builder and design activist.

Her 15+ years of experience has resulted in a progressive landscape design portfolio of professional work, creative inquiry into ecology + design, a flexibility in teaching interests and enthusiasm for transdisciplinary collaboration within the academy and the profession. Her desire to teach was born from an interest to create a stronger connection between theory and practice – – – and to expand creative practice by deepening design inquiry through application of research into the built environment. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS).

Lisa has led the design and implementation of award-winning projects that innovate on ecological design as a project leader at established design firms: West 8 New York, Future Green Studio Brooklyn, MNLA New York, and Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects Chicago.  Her own collaborative practice dubbed Field Catalysts, partners students with nonprofits and communities to use landscape as a lens to amplify thoughtful public engagement with collaborative action and impact.

In addition to teaching graduate level courses on design, design thinking and public engagement at the University of Michigan, Lisa collaborates with firms OSD Outside on design implementation of an Arts Campus in downtown Detroit, with Unknown Studio on green infrastructure and urban afforestation initiatives in Baltimore and with Horizon Geospatial on geodesign-based community engagement workshops around the country.

She is currently the VP of Education for the Michigan Chapter of ASLA and has previously held board positions with the New York City Chapter ASLA and was their chapter’s Public Awareness Representative with National ASLA.

Lisa received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Policy and her Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Michigan.

Patrick Earl Hammie is a visual artist—painter, sculptor, illustrator—who uses portraits and allegories to examine personal and shared Black experiences and offers stories that expand how we express notions of gender and race today. Hammie studied drawing at Coker University (2004) and received an MFA in painting from University of Connecticut (2008). His works and collaborations have been exhibited in Germany, India, South Africa, and the United States, at venues that span the California African American Museum, The Drawing Center, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Kunstwerk Carlshütte, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Zhou B. Art Center. He was an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center and the inaugural recipient of the Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship from Wellesley College. His works are included in public and private collections including the David C. Driskell Center (Maryland), Kinsey Institute Collections (Indiana), Kohler Company Collection (Wisconsin), JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York), and William Benton Museum of Art (Connecticut). He has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Joyce Foundation, Midwestern Voices and Visions, Puffin Foundation, Tanne Foundation, the states of Illinois and Connecticut, and other private foundations. Hammie currently serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of Studio Art at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the School of Art + Design.

Initially trained as an architect in her hometown of Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria), Sonia Hirt holds a master’s and a doctoral degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Georgia, she served as Dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland in College Park; Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Virginia Tech; and Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Sonia is the author/co-author of 85 scholarly and professional publications with 2,500 citations. Her latest article, on shrinking cities, co-authored with Professor Robert Beauregard of Columbia University, was published in International Planning Studies (2021). Sonia’s book “Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space,” published by Wiley-Blackwell, received the Honorable Mention for the Book Prize in Political and Social Studies sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. This award is given to an outstanding monograph in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography. Her book “Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land Use Regulation,” published by Cornell Press, received several academic honors. These include the Honorable Mention for the 2015 Best Book Award of the Urban Affairs Association; shortlist for the Best Book Award of the International Planning History Society; one of the Ten Best Books in Urban Planning, Design and Development of 2015 by Planetizen; list of Outstanding Academic Titles by Choice Magazine; and the biennial John Friedmann Best Book Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. In 2019, Planetizen named the book one of fourteen Top Urban Planning Books of the Decade (2010-2020). In 2020, Book Authority ranked it in the Top Forty Land Use Law Books of All Time.

Sonia is also the editor of “The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs” (with Diane Zahm), published by Routledge, and the author of “Twenty Years of Transition: The Evolution of Urban Planning in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, 1989-2009” (UN HABITAT; with Kiril Stanilov). She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Planning History  (JOPH)—the official peer-reviewed journal of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (previously, she was Co-Editor-in-Chief of JOPH). Through her career, she is or has been member of the editorial boards of ten scholarly journals, including Planning Perspectives, Planning Research and Practice, and Urban Design International.

Sonia’s scholarly interests focus on the interactions between social and cultural values and the urban built environment. Through her scholarship and teaching, she aims to advance understanding of the relationships between social processes, cultural values, and urban forms, and to create opportunities to make cities more equitable, prosperous, and sustainable. Her research has both a theoretical and an applied perspective. She strives to enhance the quality of urban environments by developing a richer theoretical understanding of the social processes and cultural values that influence their evolution. She also strives to provoke critical debates within the design and planning professions and thus contribute to innovation in practice.

As Learning Technologist for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas College of Fine Arts, Dr. Yvonne Houy supports faculty in all of its seven areas (Architecture, Art, Entertainment Engineering Design, Dance, Film, Music and Theatre)—over 120 tenured and tenure-track faculty, part-time professors of practice and graduate teaching assistants. Her goal is to improve faculty satisfaction and student learning outcomes through a wide variety of online educational resources for in-person, hybrid and fully online courses.

A graduate of Cornell University (M.A. & Ph.D.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.), and former Visiting Assistant Professor at the highly selective, liberal arts-focused Pomona College, Dr. Houy understands the needs and challenges of higher education institutions that value research, teaching, and diversity. This is enhanced by her interdisciplinary career: After earning her Ph.D. in the Humanities with a media studies emphasis, she followed her interest in online learning technologies and computer programming to become a learning technologist and professional development facilitator.

Believing deeply in the power of learning to drive equity, she is an active member of the international Computer Science For All movement, and, since 2016, a national professional development facilitator for the Code.org Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles curriculum. At the regional level, she has produced events such as the Las Vegas Maker Faire,  the local STEAM educators’ showcase Explore.Learn.Inspire., the interdisciplinary Las Vegas Make-a-thon 2.0 on the future of experience design, and online transdisciplinary design charrettes to transform arts education. In all these projects and her courses she enjoys teaching artists and designers how to use coding and mobile app development as a new creative “canvas.”

Influenced by Aikido and transformative mediation, she is known in the UNLV community as a resource who bridges divergent perspectives for productive collaborations. She facilitates challenging and complex conversations such as for Design Sprints and conflict mediations. She serves on the UNLV Faculty Technology Advisory Board and as the UNLV Faculty Senate representative for the UNLV AI policy committee, and is the founding editor of Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education, a new peer-reviewed digital journal.

Her scholarship focuses on socially and culturally disruptive mobile technologies, propaganda technologies and techniques, and research-based best practices for online student engagement, which is intertwined with her interests in Flow experiences, mental states conducive to productivity and creativity, and her 15+ years of experience in Aikido, the martial art known for balancing conflict resolution and collaboration.

R. Benjamin Knapp is the Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. ICAT seeks to promote research and education at the boundaries between art, design, engineering, and science. Dr. Knapp also leads the Music, Sensors, and Emotion research group, with researchers in the UK and the US.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Knapp has been working to create meaningful links between human-computer interaction, universal design, and various forms of creativity. His research on human-computer interaction has focused on the development and design of user-interfaces and software that allow both composers and performers to augment the physical control of a musical instrument with direct sensory interaction. He holds twelve patents and is the co-inventor of the BioMuse system, which enables artists to use gesture, cognition, and emotional state to interact with audio and video media.

In previous positions, Dr. Knapp has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at University College, Dublin, and chief technology officer of the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre. As the director of technology at MOTO Development Group in San Francisco, Calif., he managed teams of engineers and designers developing human-computer interaction systems for companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Logitech. He co-founded BioControl Systems, a company that develops mobile bioelectric measurement devices for artistic interaction. Dr. Knapp has also served as professor and chair of the Department of Computer, Information, and Systems Engineering at San Jose State University.

He earned a doctorate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. Dr. Knapp has been a PI in several pan-European projects including, CAPSIL (Common Awareness and Knowledge Platform for Studying and Enabling Independent Living) and SIEMPRE (Social Interaction and Entrainment Using Music Performance) and coordinated the EU project, BRAID (Bridging Research in Ageing and ICT Development).

José Manuel Izquierdo is associate professor of music, and Director of Research and Postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. During the last five years he has been leading the PhD in Arts, a pioneering program in Chile and South America, the first in the region with an interdisciplinary focus on  Practice as Research in performance, visual arts and music. With a PhD from the University of Cambridge (where he was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar), his research focuses on music and culture and Latin America, and opera studies, with a focus on mobilities and the circulation of music. He has a particular interest in problems of postcolonial approaches to culture and heritage in Latin America, having led several projects in rethinking the ways in which Western art forms have operated in the region since colonial times. His publications have earned him several awards, including the Otto Mayer Serra prize for musicology, and the Tosc@ award for transnational opera studies.

Susan Lakin is currently a Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the College of Art and Design.  She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and worked as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles, Sweden and Australia.  In addition to her commercial photography work, she owned and operated a professional retail photographic supply store in Burbank, CA.

Attracted to RIT’s strong photography and computer science departments, Susan accepted her teaching position shortly after completing an MFA in Art Studio with an emphasis in digital arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She works across disciplines in her academic and art practices, which led to her role as a Fellow in the School of Individualized Study, an RIT academic unit that provides flexible individualized education pathways.  Additionally, she serves on the RIT Center for Engaged Storycraft Steering Committee in the College of Liberal Arts, an interdisciplinary center working and playing with story-based creativity, research, and technical craft.

Susan’s artwork has received numerous awards and is part of the permanent collection at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and Photography Museum of Lishui, China.  She has produced multiple interactive transmedia projects exploring the intersections of music, art, and technology.  More recently, she is engaged with immersive technology and collaborates on community projects in the nonprofit sector.  She is a founding member and co-chair of the RIT Frameless Labs, a collective to advance research, innovation and artistic creation in fields of virtual and augmented reality.  She is chair of the 2020 annual Frameless Labs XR Symposium, an event and online journal for the community of VR/AR makers to encourage collaboration, growth of existing ventures and inspiration for new projects and technology.

Lisa D. McNair is a Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and Deputy Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT). From 2018 to 2023 she was Director of the Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI), the education, outreach, and engagement arm of ICAT. She has held leadership positions in the university’s interdisciplinary initiatives and served as Assistant Department Head of Graduate Programs and Chair of the Promotion & Tenure Committee in the VT Engineering Education department. In 2013 she began training as a sculptor and stone carver with Bob Lockhart and Darcy Meeker and applies this experience to both her art and to collaborative education. Her overarching goal is to create learning experiences that are research-informed and that transverse perspectives within and beyond the university. Her funded NSF projects have included revolutionizing the culture of the VT ECE department, identifying practices in intentionally inclusive Maker spaces, and exploring professional identity development in Civil Engineering students with disabilities. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on historical and social forces shaping cold climate building projects in Alaskan housing and beginning a collaborative project with researchers from the arts, neuroscience, and immersive technologies to bridge physical and disciplinary distances. Her work in CENI focuses on building networks between the university and multiple community sectors and supporting engagement in science, engineering, arts, and design. In addition to directing 11 PhD dissertations and serving on an additional 17 PhD committees, Dr. McNair has funded and mentored 6 post-graduate scholars (5 PhD, 1 MFA) with a range of professional accomplishments and goals, including scholars seeking tenure-track positions as well as academic and industry-based administrative careers.  She earned a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and B.A. in English at the University of Georgia. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6654-2337

Rogério M. Pinto  is Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Berit Ingersoll-Dayton Collegiate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work; he is also Professor of Theatre and Drama in U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Pinto focuses on finding academic, sociopolitical and cultural venues for broadcasting voices of oppressed individuals and groups. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, his community-engaged research focuses on the impact of interprofessional collaboration on the delivery of evidence-based services (HIV and drug-use prevention and care) to marginalized racial/ethnic and sexual minorities in the United States and Brazil. Pinto conducts art-based scholarly research. He performed “Marília,” a one-person play, on New York City’s Theatre Row in 2015 and at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, Vrystaat, South Africa in 2016. “Marília” won the United Solo Festival Best Documentary Script. In “Marília,” Pinto explores the tragic death of his three-year-old sister and how it haunts and inspires the family she left behind. Funded by the University of Michigan Office of Research and several other sources, he built the “Realm of the Dead,” an art installation to investigate his own marginalization as a gender non-confirming, mixed-race and Latinx immigrant. “Realm of the Dead” was presented at the School of Social Work as part of its Centennial celebration in 2021.

Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo is an associate professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Performance, Visualization, & Fine Arts. She is also the founding director of the Soft Interaction Lab and serves as the director of the Institute for Applied Creativity. Seo holds a PhD degree in Interactive Art and Technology from Simon Fraser University in Canada and an MFA degree in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York.

Seo’s interdisciplinary art practice explores the intersection between the human, nature, and technology. Her research aims to engage diverse audiences through embodied and immersive interactions, fostering meaningful relationships within artworks and with participants. Her creative practice and research center on interactive art, as it encourages immersive experiences. Throughout her career, Seo has developed tangible interfaces and mixed reality learning applications for STEAM education, medical/nursing education, and social awareness. Her research has received support from various organizations, including the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Health Resources & Services Administration.

Seo’s interactive art has been showcased locally, nationally, and internationally at notable venues such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH ASIA, IDMAA, TEI, and Creativity & Cognition. Her contributions extend to publishing in various journals and conference proceedings, covering topics like tangible/embodied interaction, interactive design, participatory design, and learning technology.

Chris Walker is the Director of the Division of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a Professor in the Dance Department and founding artistic director of the First Wave program in the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. Walker co-directs #BARS Workshop at The Public Theatre in NYC, a lab series for artists to investigate the intersection between contemporary verse and theater, created by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs. He is also a senior choreographer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, and program director for the New Waves Dance & Performance Institute in Trinidad & Tobago.

Walker creates contemporary dance, theater and performance artwork rooted in the visual and performance cultures of the African Diaspora. He works in the disciplines of dance, theater, film/video. He served as movement director for two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s Mlima’s Tale, which ran at the Public’s Martinson Hall and he is the recent choreographer for The Secret Life of Bees, The Musical produced by Atlantic Theatre in NYC. Walker has collaborated with Laura Anderson Barbata to develop Jus Luv/Rolling Calf a Jamaican ‘mas’ for her Intervention: Indigo project, a performance that was presented in the 2015 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Brooklyn, NY.

His concert dance work has been presented in Europe, Asia and throughout the Americas. His collaboration with Kevin Ormsby and KasheDance in Toronto titled FACING Home: Love & Redemption is currently and has been on tour internationally since its premiere in 2015. He has received numerous international and national grants and honors for his creative research work. He recently completed a Romnes Fellowship, which supported his research on homophobia in the African Diaspora and in 2020 he was named one of the School of Education’s Impact 2030 Faculty Fellows.