Jeanne Tan, Ph.D. is the COO of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence in Design (AiDLab) and a Professor of Fashion and Textiles at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPolyU). She is a design practitioner who investigates creative innovations that interface design and technology. Her research focuses on the integration of AI and textiles to create interactive materials for fashion, interiors, and rehabilitation. Jeanne’s work had been collected as part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Silk, China and examples of international showcases are at Milan Fashion Week A/W 2023 and Victoria & Albert Museum. Jeanne is often invited to share her work internationally at eventse, Fashionary, Kiabi, CLP Power Hong Kong Limited, and The Hong Kong Red Cross.
Laura Devendorf, Ph.D. is a design researcher who has a fascination with the relationship between frustration and design. Through practices of weaving (sometimes with circuitry, sometimes without) or performing as a machine I reflect the forces that shape humans and things—the benefits of struggle, work, labor, and not getting what you might expect. With many students and collaborators, I ask about the purpose of design in the Anthropocene, where not getting what we want might be exactly what we need. Some of these stories are told in the objects and some are presented as academic articles, largely published in the field of HCI. Some of these stories have required me to build new kinds of tools, techniques, and software and I commit to sharing those through open-source projects. Laura is an Assistant Professor at the ATLAS Institute and Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she directs the Unstable Design Lab. I am also affiliate faculty in the department of Intermedia Writing, Art, and Performance. She received her PhD at the School of Information at University of California, Berkeley and have bachelors degrees in computer science and studio art from the University of California Santa Barbara.
Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University, where she founded and directs the Hybrid Body Lab. Her research practice in Hybrid Skins blends cultural perspectives into designing conformable interfaces across all scales. Kao was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her research agenda. Kao and her lab have received numerous Honorable Mention/Best Paper Awards in top-tier Computer Science conferences (ACM CHI, UIST, ISWC and DIS) and media coverage by Forbes, CNN, and TIME Magazine. Kao served as a program chair for ACM International Symposium of Wearable Computers (ISWC), the premier venue for wearable computers.
Kao and her lab also strive to make an impact in the design and art communities. To this end, Kao's work has been exhibited internationally in venues including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture, and on the New York Fashion Week runway, along with recognitions from the design community through the A'Design Award, the Fast Company Innovation by Design Award Finalist, an Ars Electronica STARTS Prize Nomination, and the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.
