Anne Burdick, Chair
Anne Burdick is a regular participant in the international dialogue regarding the future of graduate education and research in design. In addition, she designs experimental text projects in diverse media, for which she has garnered recognition, from the prestigious Leipzig Award for book design to I.D. Magazine’s Interactive Design Review for her work with interactive texts. Burdick has designed books of literary/media criticism by authors such as Marshall McLuhan and N. Katherine Hayles and she is currently developing electronic corpora with the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Burdick’s writing and design can be found in the Los Angeles Times, Eye Magazine and Electronic Book Review, among others, and her work is held in the permanent collections of both SFMOMA and MoMA. Burdick studied graphic design at both Art Center College of Design and San Diego State University prior to receiving a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in graphic design at California Institute of the Arts.

Elizabeth Chin, Core Faculty
Elizabeth Chin received a PhD from NYU in Anthropology in 1996 and a BFA in Drama and Anthropology in 1985. Chin is an anthropologist whose interests range from children and childhood to Haitian folkloric dance. She has Purchasing Power (Minnessota, 2001) was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award. In 2006 the Young America's Foundation singled out her course The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie as an example of "bizarre liberal activism in the classroom." Among her current projects: developing a performative approach to PowerPoint presentations, in the context of historical and ethnographic research on the dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham; an autoethnography of her consumer life; analysis of kid-generated Barbie sex videos found on Youtube.

Sean Donahue, Core Faculty
Sean Donahue is principal of Research Centered- Design, a Los Angeles-based design practice that explores how design can be utilized to make significant contributions to society. Donahue has lectured and published internationally on the practice of media design and design research and has led studios at RISD; Royal College of Art, London; and North Carolina State University, where he was the 2004 Designer-in-Residence. Recent research has been published by the University of Cambridge, Princeton Architectural Press, MIT Press and ID Magazine.

Tim Durfee, Core Faculty, Director, AMP Studio
An architect and partner of Los Angeles-based Durfee|Regn, Tim Durfee’s work includes exhibitions, urban sign systems and interfaces. Durfee has created exhibitions for The Hammer and The Huntington and a permanent gallery for Target’s corporate headquarters. He has collaborated with artists—Doug Aitken’s installation “Ultraworld”— and developed an award-winning Web site for LACMA. He taught at Woodbury University and at SCI-Arc, where he was director of Visual Studies from 2001 to 2005. Prior to receiving a master’s degree in architecture from Yale University, he studied literature and history at the University of Rochester.

Ben Hooker, Core Faculty
Although artist and designer Ben Hooker’s back- ground is in screen-based multimedia design, lately he finds himself collaborating with architects, industrial designers and computer scientists working in the field of human-computer interaction. Before joining Art Center, Hooker was visiting faculty at Intel Research in Berkeley. Previously, he taught at Central Saint Martins College and at the Royal College of Art, London. He continues to realize many creative projects in partnership with designer Shona Kitchen, including an electronic artwork installation at San Jose International Airport. Ben has a B.S. in electronic imaging and media commu- nications from the University of Bradford and an M.A. in computer related design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Phil van Allen, Core Faculty, Director, N.E.T.
Philip van Allen is an interaction designer, educator, researcher and technologist with 30 years experience at the intersection of technology and the creative arts. He founded interactive production company Commotion in 1993 and has worked with a range of clients including Philips, Nestlé, U2, Yoko Ono, Infiniti and Acura. Van Allen is also the lead author of the transmedia publication (book, Web site, mobile phone content and a poster) The New Ecology of Things. As part of van Allen’s ongoing research, the publication explores the emerging world of ubiquitous networks, smart objects and spaces and approaches to design practice that embrace mythology, meaning-making and embodiment.

Casey Anderson, Digital Tech Coordinator
Casey Anderson is an artist working in a number of media, including composition, improvisation, electronic music, saxophone, text, and installations. He has performed with Jason Kahn, Ulrich Krieger, MKM, Fomoudou Don Moye, Michael Pisaro, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Trayle, and the Dog Star Orchestra. Performances, exhibitions, and residencies include MOCA – Los Angeles (CA), ISSUE Project Room (NY), STEIM (NL), Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), and Mass MOCA (MA). He currently lives and teaches in Los Angeles, California, and works with Machine Project.

Helen Cahgn, Coordinator
Helen Cahng is an artist and curator interested in notions about collective memory. Often working collaboratively, her projects have been exhibited locally and internationally at Sea and Space Explorations, Telic Arts Exchange, Artillerie (Berlin), and Koh-I-noor (Copenhagen). Helen holds an MFA from Otis College of Art in Los Angeles and a BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Kevin Wingate, Director
Kevin Wingate is an artist and educator. Current preoccupations include: enzo ferraris and other objects built-to-break, sad songs, rap music, single anthologies, customizations, memento mori, sunrises and sunsets, cultural fetishes, geometric abstractions, the physical limits of materials, long runs and musky smoke filled gyms. He exhibited at Acuna-Hansen Gallery in Los Angeles and nationally as part of Pillow Lavås, a collaborative group that intersects lifestyle, culture and social interaction. In 2004, the group was part of the Class: C gallery for the Orange County Biennial of Art. Kevin holds an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego and an M.A. and B.F.A. from Webster University in St. Louis.

Rob Ball, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Rob Ball is a Los Angeles based spatial experience designer and design educator. His interests in both collections based exhibits and branded environments have given him expertise in a wide variety of 3 dimensional projects over 25 years. In the past few years he has also championed a new program of a real world, real project studio, abroad. Students move to a targeted city and evaluate it from the outside in / inside out. This “Fresh Eyes” approach allows them to delve into a variety of branding issues, acting not only as problem solvers but opportunity seekers for city governments and private foundations. Students have explored the potentials of Copenhagen and Berlin in 2005 and 2006. Rob is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Environmental / Industrial Design as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Fine Arts / Art History.

Elise Co, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Elise Co is a media artist and founding partner of Aeolab, a design and technology consulting firm in Los Angeles. Co holds an M.S. in media arts and sciences and a B.S. in architecture from MIT. Previously, she taught courses in interaction design and physical computing at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Switzerland. Her work has been shown internationally, including at MoMA, SIGGRAPH and IMRF Tokyo.

Shannon Herbert, Thesis Writing Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Shannon Herbert is a thesis advisor in the Media Design Program and co-teaches the Knowledge Sharing Workshop. She recently completed her Ph.D. in English Literature at The University of Chicago. Her dissertation describes a new genre of contemporary fiction, which she calls curatorial novels, which resemble detective fiction but abandon the detective, staging a drama where information never attains the status of knowledge. The genre thus registers the tensions of a broader epistemological landscape: an excess of data but no stable ground of objectivity, a longing for certainty without the means of attaining it. She also teaches literature and writing courses at Santa Monica College.

Garnet Hertz, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Garnet Hertz is a contemporary artist and Fulbright Scholar whose work explores themes of technological progress, creativity, innovation and interdisciplinarity. Hertz is an Artist in Residence in the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction at UC Irvine. He has shown his work internationally, including Ars Electronica, DEAF and SIGGRAPH and was awarded the prestigious 2008 Oscar Signorini Award in robotic art. He is founder and director of Dorkbot SoCal, a monthly Los Angeles-based DIY lecture series on electronic art and design.

Norman Klein, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Norman Klein is a cultural critic, media historian and novelist. He is the author of The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects; The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory; and The Imaginary Twentieth Century, a science-fiction database novel and exhibition which ran at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Klein is a professor at CalArts, has taught as adjunct faculty at Art Center since 1982 and is now also a thesis advisor for the Media Design Program.

Jennifer Krasinski, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Jennifer Krasinski writes on the subject of art, film, and video for numerous publications such as Frieze, Modern Painters, Art In America, Spike Art Quarterly, Bidoun, East of Borneo and N+1 Film Review. Her fiction has appeared in journals such as Punk Planet, Joyland, Frozen Tears, and MYTHM. She is also the author of Prop Tragedies (Wrath of Dynasty Press, 2010). In addition to being a thesis advisor in the Media Design program, she is an adjunct faculty member Graduate Fine Art department. She is a graduate of Vassar College, The Courtauld Institute of Art, and Art Center College of Design.

Lisa Krohn, Thesis Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Lisa Krohn is the creative director and lead designer at Krohn Design, a brand and design practice whose clients have included Herman Miller, Walt Disney Imagineering and the San Diego Children’s Museum. Krohn studied art and art history at Brown University, trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and worked with renowned designer Mario Bellini. A winner of the prestigious Rome Prize, Krohn’s work can be found in the collections of SFMOMA, MoMA and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Mike Milley, Thesis Advisor
Remorseless in his affinity for high-profile corporate design groups, Mike has worked on advanced design teams at Nike and Philips. He's currently Global Lead of Socio-Cultural Research at Samsung Design, where he manages the Design Research and Strategy team. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Parsons School of Design.

Thea Petchler, Thesis Writing Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Thea Petchler is Art Center’s Director of Writing. She teaches courses on postwar U.S. history, creative nonfiction and visual studies and her research focuses on the democratization and professionalization of creativity in American business and education. Petchler has served as a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy and as a program officer at the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

Molly Wright Steenson, Thesis Writing Advisor, Adjunct Faculty
Molly Wright Steenson is a design strategist and architectural historian who researches how technology and interactivity fit into our cities, buildings and everyday lives. Molly was a resident professor and director of the Connected Communities group at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in architecture at Princeton University, where her dissertation focuses on computing and interactivity in architecture and urbanism in the 60s and 70s. She holds a Master’s of Environmental Design (M.E.D.) in architectural history from Yale University. At Art Center, she is a thesis advisor and teaches in the knowledge-sharing workshop.

Brad Bartlett, Adjunct Faculty
Brad Bartlett earned his master’s degree in design from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1998, and holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from North Carolina State University. His work at Cranbrook, which explored the relationship between media and culture, was presented at MIT and Fabrica of Benetton in Italy. In 1999, Print magazine selected him as “New Visual Artist.” That same year he established a design studio whose clients have included UCLA Live, MOCA, Los Angeles Institute of Architecture and Design, Nevada Museum of Art, and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. His work has been honored by ID Magazine, American Center for Design, Graphis, Communication Arts, Print Magazine, and How Magazine, among others.

John Brumfield, Adjunct Faculty
John Brumfield received his B.A. from UC Berkeley, his M.A. from California Institute of the Arts and his M.F.A. from CSU Los Angeles. John has received an NEA Grant and his work has been seen in Afterimage, Art Issues, Artweek, Artforum, Graphis, LAICA Journal, Camera Obscura and SF Camerawork.

Geoff Kaplan, Visiting Faculty
Geoff Kaplan of General Working Group has produced projects for range of academic and cultural institutions. His work is included in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art’s and MoMA’s permanent collections. He received his MFA from Cranbrook and teaches in the Graduate Program of Design at CCA and the TransMedia program in Brussels. Geoff is most recently writing, editing and designing “Power of the People: The Graphic Design of Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter-Culture, 1964-1974” which will be published by The University of Chicago Press this year.

Irene Kotlarz, Visiting Faculty
Irene Kotlarz is founding director of PLATFORM International Animation Festival, an innovative multi-platform event which debuted in Portland, Oregon in June 2007, and former Director of the Cambridge, Bristol and Cardiff Animation Festivals in Britain. She trained as an art historian before specializing in film and animation theory. She developed a specialized animation history and theory program for the University College of the Creative Arts in England, before going on to teach at Royal College of Art, and the National Film and Television School. She has curated programs for festivals, film and lecture tours internationally and has written for publications including AWN, Screen, Undercut and Shots. As Executive Producer at London’s Speedy Films, Irene produced animated shorts and commercials. She has also produced and consulted for programs on animation for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and MTV.

Christopher Morabito, Adjunct Facult
Christopher Morabito is a Los Angeles designer who enjoys writing bios of himself in the third person. After a ten year run making big websites for big companies, Chris now focuses on graphic design and typography for creative and cultural clients. His work has been recognized by Communication Arts, the Webby's, and has appeared in New York Times Magazine. In 2009 he became the art director of Black Clock, a fancy literary journal edited by Steve Erickson. Chris sometimes laments the time and money he spent earning a B.A. in Philosophy (from UCLA) and an M.F.A. in Graphic Design (from CalArts), but at least hopes you'll be impressed by his academic prowess. He believes deeply that you're never fully dressed without a smile.

Jennifer Rider, Adjunct Faculty
Jennifer focuses on the design of print and screen-based media for the arts and cultural sector. Her recent collaborations include exhibition catalogues and web sites for several Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, The Edible Schoolyard Project, LACMA and MoCA. Jennifer holds an MFA in Graphic Design from California Institute of the Arts and a Bachelor's in Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work has received multiple awards and has been recognized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

Holly Willis, Adjunct Faculty
Holly Willis is an Associate Director at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. She is also the editor of The New Ecology of Things and the author of New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image. The former editor of RES magazine, Willis has written extensively on experimental media practices for a variety of publications. She holds a Ph.D. in critical studies in cinema- television from USC.