Doctoral Thesis: Mindfulness and Embodiment in the Synthetic Experience

I am in a one year appointment to help teach a spring semester class on data visualization utilizing the CyberCANOE (see http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/08/18/cyber-canoe-to-explore-worlds-of-data-in-3-d/ ) that includes students from Computer Science, Marine Biology and Art, as well as other academic duties. I also work at 'Imiloa, where the class is held, on various immersive and interactive visualization projects.

Collaborated with astronomers, historians, educators as well as other artists in the design and production of immersive and interactive pieces for special presentations, shows and research-oriented exhibitions. Examples include online interactive games to explain the goals of the IBEX Mission; lead interface developer and designer for the large high resolution tiled display "Moonwall"​; interactive touchscreen pieces and stereoscopic animations for exhibitions; particle animations for dome shows and exhibitions such as cosmic rays, evolution of the Universe and redshift; Cosmology Gallery core team; information graphics for shows; poster design for astronomy lectures; signage for VERITAS site in Tucson; Cosmic Web design, which won 1st place for the poster and information graphics of the NSF Visualization Challenge; directed short movies for research comparing short and long-term term learning effects between stereoscopic and 2-dimensional film. In the role of Associate Director of the SVL, installed and tried various Linux, Windows and Mac libraries and software -stereo, interactive, led weekly meetings, managed Digital Curator as well as astronomy and Human Computer Interaction interns; presented and reviewed papers regarding visualization, interactivity and the laboratory itself at a variety of conferences, and did invited guest presentations at events; wrote three blogs on visualization for the museum website; #astrolunch team; organized art and science artists'​ visits and presentations including Miwa Matreyek's performance and an Augmented Reality summer exhibition; Connected with Sphero creators in 2013 and drafted science protocols and activities; coordinated a full Spanish family day "Mi Galaxia es su Galaxia"; participated in the Green Team to promote sustainability among staff and visitors; sent a marshmallow peep to space, and built or baked several edible space related installations with the sole intention of making my coworkers laugh.

I was invited to teach the Immersive Environments class for the fall of 2011at the Art and Science Department (I continued working at the Planetarium through this period). I created a syllabus covering the basics of computer graphics, from 3D modeling, to performance, animation through bones, scripting interaction such as triggers and collision detection as well as navigation with sensors. I also trained a student assistant who had no previous experience with real time computer graphics. Since the stereo facility had not been used for a few months because nobody knew how to, I created a stereo rig to run Unity3D and taught how to work with it to both students and staff who would continue teaching the class. A report on this class can be found in my paper "Learning immersion without getting wet", downloadable from https://planetary-collegium.academia.edu/JulietaAguilera

Started as an RA working with the CAVE, showing demos to VIPs and also worked with the webgroup, designing the main page based on the rest of the site that had already been designed. Modeled a few avatars, websites, posters and logos, including the visual identity and all its printed byproducts for iGrid2005. Worked for cavern group and designed the logo and dentity for SAGE and part of its interface. The logo depicts the silhouettes of two people (Laura and Arun, that I photographed) standing in front of outlined letters with white glow against dark green background. I arranged upper and lower case of a font as to resemble a tiled display.

Was invited to teach a few courses right before moving to Chicago. Courses taught were in the Human Computer Interaction and business programs of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Department.

Full time teaching position for the Art Department. Courses taught included Typography, Image development, layout for print –portable and large scale signage– and digital media, Identity, Electronic Imaging (VR, Video and interactive applications), and History of Design. Also taught design together with Prof. Alys Culhane's creative writing class so our students would collaborate on the creation of written objects. The objects were exhibited at the PSU library.

Was asked to stay a year to help design an art book. Continued taking Art History courses since Notre Dames staff get tuition waivers.