Education
The Student Experience
Collaboration comes in all forms for AME students – through research modules, class projects, informal afterclass gatherings, and through the student association, AMESA, a community of AME students committed to sharing their work and having fun. Such interconnected experiences expose students to cross-functional teams, multiple disciplines and research approaches they might never have considered.
"I get to analyze human movement in an environment that involves engineering, dance, computer science, psychology, kinesiology and a number of other disciplines," explains Ph.D. student in computer science and engineering Stjepan Rajko, who works closely with Jessica Mumford as both also pursue M.F.A.s in Dance (with an AME concentration). Even though Stjepan's background is in the sciences, and Jessica has experience in psychology and dance, the duo connects on many levels. They combine their expertise for "explaining to computers different ways of understanding and analyzing human movement."
Their workspace and lab are next to those of Suneth Attygalle and Yinpeng Chen, both members of the Rehabilitation module. Suneth, a bioengineering Ph.D. student with a specialization in AME, chose to work with AME to combine his interests in interactive technology, digital music and neuroscience. Yinpeng is an electrical engineering Ph.D. student with an AME concentration. Suneth's investigation of mediated rehabilitation and neural plasticity will extend some of the models that Yinpeng developed. Yinpeng has also adapted some of Stjepan's motion analysis code to use in the Rehabilitation module.
Jessica and Stjepan's work is also combined with work by Brandon Mechtley, a computer science and engineering Ph.D. student with an AME concentration, to create "a mind-blowing full-body resource negotiation interaction" for the Sustainability module. Brandon’s interdisciplinary experiences at AME helped him realize that the "problems that I have previously seen only in the light of dynamical systems very clearly relate to and interact with concepts in composition and choreography, as well as other fields such as the cognitive and social sciences, giving me hope that we are all truly working toward the same goal."
Brandon, Lisa Tolentino and Ryan Spicer were classmates in Mediating Complexity, where they collaborated on developing a water supply game. Lisa is a Media Arts and Sciences Ph.D. student with a background in computer science, digital music and experimental music performance. Within her first year at AME, she built new skill sets, including "developing new ideas through critique, iterative design, and rapid prototyping; performing and exchanging roles within the collaborative design process; presenting these ideas to industry leaders; preparing and making the most of user studies; and maintaining an open and engaging dialogue with community partners as we embed technology."
Lisa and Sarah Hatton, who is pursuing
her M.F.A. in visual art with an AME concentration, are both members of the K-12 module, where they work together to build mediated learning scenarios for a local high school. Ryan, a media arts and sciences Ph.D. student with a background in film and video production, is "working on a Web-based project to visualize and allow exploration of the narratives implicit in changing patterns of collaboration within teams." He attends Phoenix DIY events with Sarah and Brandon, collaborates with Jessica on dance for camera pieces and shares a mutual passion for open source software with Stjepan. All of these students are also highly active members of AMESA, organizing an annual open house featuring student work and elevating the level of fun at AME.