Living Matter

Researchers from ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design, THING, Living Matter and Superhuman Computing labs presented four papers, including three that received “Honorable Mention” awards, at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

Exploring biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction, authored by Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf introduced the DIS audience to biofoam, a water soluble and biodegradable material that can be made conductive.

ATLAS researchers will present six published works and two workshops at the 2022 ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), the world’s preeminent forum for the field of human-computer interaction. The conference, commonly referred to as “CHI,” will be held hybrid-onsite April 30-May 6, 2022 in New Orleans.

ATLAS PhD student Fiona Bell is passionate about sustainability; her doctoral dissertation tackles how to reduce waste through encouraging intimate relationships between designers, the materials they use and the artifacts they develop. In recognition of her work, Bell recently received financial support to help complete her thesis through a Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

SIGGRAPH sat down with Purnendu, a PhD student in the ATLAS Institute and a researcher at Meta Reality Labs, to talk about his team’s SIGGRAPH 2021 Labs project, “Electriflow: Augmenting Books With Tangible Animation Using Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators.” The team's actuator technology strives to augment animation within physical books.

A group of 14 artists and technologists connected to ATLAS contributed to the Museum of Boulder’s newest exhibit, “Convivial Machines,” which opened Oct. 30. It's the first museum installation for Boulder Experiments in Art and Technology (B.E.A.T), founded by Jiffer Harriman (ATLS PhD '16).

ATLAS researchers have 10 published works and one special interest group associated with the CHI 2021 conference, the world’s preeminent conference for the field of human-computer interaction. Held virtually, CHI 2021, also known as ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, took place May 8-13.

Two ATLAS PhD students, Sandra Bae and Fiona Bell, took home top awards from the 15th ACM International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) Student Design Challenge, which ran Feb. 14-19.

Mirela Alistar, assistant professor of computer science and the director of the ATLAS Institute’s Living Matter Lab, wants to make healthcare more personal with microfluidic biochips.

At a time when the field of human-computer interaction is becoming more important than ever, ATLAS researchers are making substantial contributions, contributing nine papers and two workshops to CHI '20.