About

Current Graduate Assistants

Jess Zepeda is an interdisciplinary designer from Moline, Illinois. She holds a bachelor’s degree in American Culture Studies and Film & Media Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and is currently pursuing her master’s in Integrated Design and Media. With a background spanning UX design, fashion, and themed experience design, her work bridges digital and physical spaces to craft immersive, engaging interactions. Her current research examines how physical interactions shape a person’s sense of agency, exploring the ways design can encourage participation and influence decision-making.

Available Hours for lab tours: Tuesdays, 10-12pm

Contact: jz3618@nyu.edu

Lorca Yu is a multidisciplinary artist and fabricator currently based in Brooklyn, and a current student in Integrated Design & Media program at New York University. With a background in French Literature and Design, their practice examines the intersections of environment, technology, and human society, critically addressing how artificial systems shape contemporary landscapes. Centering on the concept of “artificial nature,” their work explores how technology intervenes in and redefines the relationship between individuals, communities, and the natural or urban environments they inhabit. Through physical computing, computational art, and conceptual storytelling, they merge the tangible with the digital to engage audiences in dialogues on social, political, and ecological transformation.

Available Hours for lab tours: Thursdays, 3-5pm

Contact: qy964@nyu.edu

---

Faculty

Kathleen McDermott is an interdisciplinary artist and designer with a background in installation, prop-making, and sculpture, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She combines her knowledge of fabrication with open-source hardware to build a language of absurdity that merges new media, design, performance, and video. She is interested in technologies that are not productive, robots badly suited to absurd purposes and electronic creations beyond her control. She received her BFA from Cornell University and her MFA in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong. She a Ph.D. in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an Industry Assistant Professor at NYU Tandon. 

---

Past Graduate Assistants

Bo Byun was born in Seoul, Korea. In 2015, She graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Fashion Design. After graduation, Bo worked as a fashion designer for about 4 years, where she acquired fashion industry knowledge and skills. In fall 2019, she enrolled in the Integrated Design Media Masters program at New York University where she explores multidisciplinary experimentations with emerging media technologies. NYU allowed her to expand UX knowledge and integrate her working experiences into new sustainability research.

See more of Bo’s work

Amy Hu was born in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts. She furthered her studies at New York University with an M.S. in Integrated Digital Media. Amy enjoys being able to put on different “hats” to explore the relationship between digital/physical interfaces and the impacts they have towards users.

See more of Amy’s work

Aishwarya “Ash” Tiwari was born in Meerut, India. She is an interdisciplinary creator with a B.E. in Computer Science from BITS Dubai and an M.S. in Integrated Digital Media from NYU. Ash is both a designer and a developer and uses this dual expertise to bring her ideas to life. She has previously worked in Web Development, Digital Marketing, and Wearable Electronics in Mumbai, Dubai, and New York City respectively. Ash is also an avid gamer, a rock concert enthusiast, and a lover of caffeine and cats.

See more of Ash’s work

Lauren Busser is a writer and editor from Connecticut. She has a Bachelor’s from Sarah Lawrence where she studied writing and literature and is a current graduate student in Integrated Digital Media at NYU. Her fiction and non-fiction work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has appeared in Best Small Fictions. Her current research interests include the intersection of arts and science education and technology and spirituality.

See more of Lauren’s work

Dana is a senior at NYU Tandon’s Integrated Design and Media program. With a passion for problem-solving and design, she aspires to design innovative experiences through technology. Her goal is to utilize design to create positive impacts in sustainability, accessibility, mental health, and connectivity. Beyond design, Dana’s interests include photography, ethics, dance, neuroscience, and coding. In her free time, she enjoys watching funny shows, walking, drinking tea, reading, and exploring new places.

See more of Dana’s work

Sauda Musharrat is an inventor from Bangladesh, working to transcend digital barriers through tangible technologies. With a background in Computer Engineering, her research aided in the development of embedded systems and robot-based solutions to address challenges in Dhaka city’s underresourced areas. She pursued her M.S. in the Integrated Design & Media program at NYU, exploring the dynamic of arts with technology to create impactful stories with human-robot interaction, wearables, and physical computing. When she is not tinkering, she invests in crafting worlds through mixed media design experiments, reading, writing, and discovering new people and places.

See more of Sauda’s work