As Scientific American reiterated this month, we are in the midst of a climate emergency. 2020 saw record-breaking wildfires and hurricanes and ended in a tie with 2016 as the hottest year on record. Aware of the massive scope of challenges that lie ahead in fighting climate change, UCI announced in January a new initiative called Solutions that Scale. Recognizing that “solutions to planetary problems must reach planetary proportions,” the initiative aims to “converge scientists and academics, policy makers, business leaders, and global citizens to identify and accelerate climate change solutions that scale.”
Continue readingMonthly Archives: April 2021
Join the Upcoming Datafication and Community Activism Forum
April 12, 2021
On Friday, April 23, 2021, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) will host its second workshop on Datafication and Community Activism, building on a dialogue that Informatics Professor Roderic Crooks started back in 2019 between activists and academics. “I hope this workshop starts a conversation, where communities that have frequently been poorly served by data-intensive technologies get a chance to express their concerns, and researchers get a chance to hear them,” Crooks said of the first workshop, which resulted in a vow to orient “future work toward the commitment that data must be used to measure systems, not people.”
Continue readingRemaking Tomorrow podcast: Mimi Ito interviewed
April 8, 2021
Mimi Ito joins us to talk about her findings in the Digital Youth Project of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative at the University of California, Irvine and how they have informed the Connected Learning Alliance and helped her establish Connected Camps.
Listen to the podcast below or at Remaking Tomorrow.
Three ICS Students Receive 2021 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Three students from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) were recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship: Elizabeth Ankrah, Adam Birnbaum and Emani Dotch.
The Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines across the U.S. Recipients receive a three-year annual stipend of $34,000, as well as $12,000 paid directly to the university to cover tuition and fees. The GRFP has a history of selecting recipients who go on to achieve high levels of success, and the promising work of these ICS recipients shows great potential in positively impacting society.
Continue readingWUNC Embodied Podcast: “Played: What Today’s Generation Of Gamers Get Right” (Tess Tanenbaum quoted)
April 7, 2021
Tess Tanenbaum, an assistant professor in the department of informatics at University of California, Irvine, talks about the link between game design and relationships that can form within games.
Listen to the podcast on the WUNC website.
Alumni Spotlight: Archana Senthilkumar’s Real-World Education Helps Bring Fictional Worlds to Life
April 2, 2021
In 2015, Archana Senthilkumar was a software engineer in India, working at Genesys, a company focused on the cloud customer experience. By 2018, she was a graduate student at UCI in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), working on a mixed-reality experience in an Informatics AR/VR Theater course. By 2020, she had a master’s degree in computer science and a new career underway at Walt Disney Animation Studios. These days, the technical director is busy being interviewed for the New Indian Express newspaper about her role in helping bring to life the animated film “Raya and the Last Dragon.” Learn more about Senthilkumar’s journey from Genesys to Disney and why she wants you to start asking more questions.
Continue reading