Off

Off

ATLAS is well-represented at this year’s conference convening at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh from July 10-14, 2023. This year’s theme is resilience. 

"Resilience is at once about flexibility, durability, and strength as well as a sense of mutuality and hope where solidaristic modes of engagement make new kinds of worlds possible. 

This also recognizes that resilience takes many forms in design discourse, ranging across: indigenous knowledge, more-than-human perspectives, and the relationship between human, material and artificial intelligences."

It is exciting to see members across more than half of ATLAS labs represented in this year’s proceedings, with broad-reaching research covering microbiomes as materials for interactive design; 3D printing with spent coffee grounds; personal informatics systems; improving cross-disciplinary collaboration among artists and researchers; expressive movement for altering emotions and awareness; and the intersection of crocheting and data. Take a look:

Fiona Bell (ATLAS PhD alum), Michelle Ramsahoye (ATLAS affiliate PhD student), Joshua Coffie (ATLAS MS alum), Julia Tung (ATLAS BS student), and Mirela Alistar (ATLAS Living Matter Lab director, assistant professor)

Our bodies are home to an unseen ecosystem of microbes that live in symbiosis with us. In this work, we extend the “human” in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to include these microbes. Specifically, we explore the skin microbiome as an intimate material for interaction design. Viewing the body as a microbial interface, we start by presenting a method to grow our microbiome such that it becomes visible to the human eye. We then present a design space that explores how different environmental parameters, such as temperature and growth media, can be controlled to influence the color of the microbiome. We further investigate how our interactions in a daily uncontrolled environment (e.g., exercising, hugging, typing) can impact the microbiome. We demonstrate several wearable applications that reveal and control the microbiome. Lastly, we address the challenges and opportunities of working with the microbiome as an intimate, living material for interaction design.

Michael L. Rivera (ATLAS Utility Research Lab Director, assistant professor), S. Sandra Bae (ATLAS PhD student)

The widespread adoption of 3D printers exacerbates existing environmental challenges as these machines increase energy consumption, waste output, and the use of plastics. Material choice for 3D printing is tightly connected to these challenges, and as such researchers and designers are exploring sustainable alternatives. Building on these efforts, this work explores using spent coffee grounds as a sustainable material for prototyping with 3D printing. This material, in addition to being compostable and recyclable, can be easily made and printed at home. We describe the material in detail, including the process of making it from readily available ingredients, its material characteristics and its printing parameters. We then explore how it can support sustainable prototyping practices as well as HCI applications. In reflecting on our design process, we discuss challenges and opportunities for the HCI community to support sustainable prototyping and personal fabrication. We conclude with a set of design considerations for others to weigh when exploring sustainable materials for 3D printing and prototyping.

For additional details, see our article on how this and other Utility Research Lab projects won awards at the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival.

Michael Jeffrey Daniel Hoefer, Stephen Voida, (ATLAS affiliate assistant professor, founding faculty, information science)

A grand challenge for computing is to better understand fundamental human needs and their satisfaction. In this work, we design a personal informatics technology probe that scaffolds reflection on how time-use satisfies Max-Neef's fundamental needs of being, having, doing, and interacting via self-aspects, relationships and organizations, activities, and environments. Through a combination of a think-aloud study (N=10) and a week-long in situ deployment (N=7), participants used the probe to complete self- aspect elicitation and Day Reconstruction Method tasks. Participants then interacted with network visualizations of their daily lives, and discovered insights about their lives. During the study, we collected a dataset of 662 activities annotated with need satisfaction ratings. Despite challenges in operationalizing a theory of need through direct elicitation from individuals, personal informatics systems show potential as a participatory and individually meaningful approach for understanding need satisfaction in everyday life.

Ruhan Yang (ATLAS PhD student), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab director, faculty member)

This paper explores the implementation of embedded magnets to enhance paper-based interactions. The integration of magnets in paper-based interactions simplifies the fabrication process, making it more accessible for building soft robotics systems. We discuss various interaction patterns achievable through this approach and highlight their potential applications.

[Workshop]
Laura Devendorf (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab director, assistant professor), Leah Buechley, Noura Howell, Jennifer Jacobs, Hsin-Liu (Cindy) Kao, Martin Murer, Daniela Rosner, Nica Ross, Robert Soden, Jared Tso, Clement Zheng (ATLAS PhD alum)

While cross-disciplinary collaboration has long been, and continues to be a cornerstone of inventive work in interactive design, the infrastructures of academia, as well as barriers to participation imposed by our professional organizations, make collaboration for some groups harder than others. In this workshop, we’ll focus specifically on how artists residencies are addressing (or not) the challenges that artists, craftspeople, and/or independent designers face when collaborating with researchers affiliated with DIS. While focusing on the question “what is mutual benefit”, this workshop seeks to combine the perspectives of artists as well as researchers collaborating with artists (through residencies or otherwise) to (1) reflect on benefits or deficiencies in what we are currently doing and (2) generate resources for our community to effectively structure and evaluate our methods of collaboration with artists. Our hope is to provide recognition of and pathways for equitable inclusion of artists as a first step towards broader infrastructural change. 

Refer to the for more details on this research. 

 

[Demo]
Ruojia Sun (ATLAS PhD student), Althea Vail Wallop (ATLAS MS student), Grace Leslie (ATLAS Brain Music Lab director, assistant professor), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab director, faculty member)

Movement forms the basis of our thoughts, emotions, and ways of being in the world. Informed by somaesthetics, we design for "taking up space" (e.g. encouraging expansive body movements), which may in turn alter our emotional experience. We demonstrate SoniSpace, an expressive movement interaction experience that uses movement sonification and visualization to encourage users to take up space with their body. We use a first-person design approach to embed qualities of awareness, exploration, and comfort into the sound and visual design to promote authentic and enjoyable movement expression regardless of prior movement experience. Preliminary results from 20 user experiences with the system show that users felt more comfortable with taking up space and with movement in general following the interaction. We discuss our findings about designing for somatically-focused movement interactions and directions for future work.

[Demo]
Mikhaila Friske (ATLAS affiliate PhD student)

This demo focuses around crocheting and data. In addition to a physical workbook for conference goers to peruse and try, there will be a few small set-ups for specific activities and a small craft circle for people to craft within if they so choose.

Off

The National Science Foundation’s CAREER award is among the most prestigious honors supporting junior faculty doing outstanding work integrating research and education toward a meaningful social impact. The CAREER award is highly competitive and is a strong indicator of future research success.

Award criteria focus on intellectual merit and broad impact—the NSF awards academic role models who have a plan to explore a body of significant research in their field. This balance of the desire to educate students within a pursuit of deep inquiry toward a purposeful goal is the signature of CAREER award winners.

At ATLAS Institute, we are proud to have had five faculty members who have received CAREER awards out of the nine so far who have been eligible. This remarkable achievement speaks to the nature of our research community as one that empowers creative engineers to bring their full selves to their work.

• Ben Shapiro, Computer Science (2015):
• Laura Devendorf, Information Science (2020):
• Danielle Szafir, Computer Science (2021):
• Grace Leslie, Music (2022):
• Carson Bruns, Mechanical Engineering (2023):

ATLAS Director Mark D Gross explains faculty hiring: “Rather than saying, ‘We specifically want to hire a brain scientist,’ we say, ‘We just want to hire a really brilliant person.’ We seek applicants who are interesting to us and who are going to do great work. We believe in them.”

The power of the research

The University of Colorado Boulder is one of only 35 U.S. public research institutions in the Association of American Universities (AAU), a group widely recognized as America’s leading research universities. This emphasis on research undergirds everything we do at CU-Boulder overall and at ATLAS specifically. 

ATLAS Institute is housed under the Research & Innovation Office at CU-Boulder, with degree programs in the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS), itself a heavily decorated and high-ranked college. ATLAS contributes to the research rigor CEAS is known for while pushing the community’s perception of where serious inquiry can spring from. 

For example, recent CAREER recipient and ATLAS assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Carson Bruns, studies new ways to apply nanotechnology for improving human health—but through the lens of “smart” tattoos that can change color with UV light exposure or temperature increases. This melding of disparate lines of interest—nanoparticles, smart technology, human health and body art—seeds unique, useful discoveries traditional methods might otherwise overlook.

Why ATLAS?

So what is it exactly about ATLAS that attracts such talent? Gross says, “Those who know what we're doing tell us we have a really interesting group of people, we’re unlike a traditional department, we’re very interdisciplinary, we blend fields, we’re open to change. Those are the kind of things that attract the people we hire.” 

The term “interdisciplinary” refers to work in two distinct academic fields of study. At ATLAS, we push this notion further, to expand boundaries, to cross-pollinate and change how we think about thinking—deep, focused research into highly specialized topics is essential, but equally important is our ability to investigate ideas across a wide range of fields.

ATLAS faculty have a different way of thinking about problems, one that sparks teams to come up with novel solutions. Despite this often unexpected approach, their research is grounded in the real world, in designing tangible things and in creating tools for others to expand on the core idea. Consider the work that Laura Devendorf, assistant professor of information science, undertakes in the Unstable Design Lab—she develops advanced software that opens the craft of weaving up to new possibilities of form and design, empowering artisans to push the medium forward.

We will continue to champion this expansive view of interdisciplinary research at ATLAS as a model for how polymaths can pursue research that would be unlikely to find a home in traditional settings, particularly in the fields of engineering and design. Our success in attracting CAREER-worthy talent proves the power of our approach to radical creativity.

Off

Off

The ATLAS Institute and the College of Music are delighted to welcome Grace Leslie to the CU Boulder faculty this fall as an assistant professor in the ATLAS Institute with a tenure home in the College of Music. Leslie is an electronic musician and music cognition researcher committed to harnessing the expression granted by new music interfaces to better understand the link between music and emotion. Ultimately, she aims to employ musical brain-computer interfaces to promote wellness.

Leslie comes to ATLAS from Georgia Tech, where she established the Brain-Music Lab and served as an assistant professor of music technology. She recently received a prestigious CAREER award, which the National Science Foundation grants to early-career faculty who have demonstrated the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. As director of the ATLAS Brain-Music Lab, she aims to continue expanding this groundbreaking field of research.

Before joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Leslie completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab, developing music neurofeedback systems for creative and therapeutic applications. She earned her PhD in Music and Cognitive Science from University of California San Diego, where she studied the expressive movements and brain dynamics supporting music engagement at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience. She’s worked on psychoacoustic research and interactive sound installation projects at IRCAM in Paris, and Audio DSP and User Experience design projects for Sennheiser, Kyocera, and Motorola. 

Off