Leonardo Aranda Brito
PhD Candidate, Media Study
Research Assistant, CAST
Leonardo is an electronic artist who graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. He received his MA in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He is the director of Medialabmx, an organization focused on research on the links between art, technology and politics. His work focuses mainly on the use of new media and its possible intersections with politics, participation and citizenship. He has exhibited in different spaces in Mexico and internationally in countries such as Russia, Austria, Colombia, Canada, Brazil, Spain and the USA. He worked as a researcher in the Multimedia Center in Mexico from 2009 to 2012. In 2015 he was part of the curatorial team of Transitio_MX 06 International Electronic Arts Festival. In 2016 he was a fellow of IDEAS CITY, New Museum. In 2017 he formed part of Interactivos at Medialab-Prado, Madrid, as well as Radical Networks in Brooklyn, NY. Recently he was awarded as a resident of the Solitude-ZKM web residency program.
Nick Bruscia
Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Research Faculty, CAST
Nicholas Bruscia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. He has over a decade of experience in applied digital design media and his primary role in collaborative projects has focused on the workflow associated with the design and realization of large-scale prototypes. A strong interest in architectural geometry and enthusiasm for calculated formal and structural elegance informs much of his work with materials and fabrication processes. His collaborative work has received several international awards including three Architizer A+ Awards in the +Fabrication and +Materials categories, and Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Fabrication Award, and has been presented internationally at venues such as the Architectural Association, London; Digital Arts Museum, Berlin; University of Texas at Austin; University of Michigan; and FabCafe, Tokyo. In addition to CAST, Bruscia is a researcher within the Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotics Technology Community of Excellence (SMART CoE), and director of the recurring Japan Study Abroad summer program.
Albert Chao
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Architecture
Situated Technologies Research Group
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Albert Chao is an artist, architect, and tinkerer. His projects range from temporary installations to mixed-use towers with an ongoing interest in understanding the place of the individual within larger systems and networks. In 2011, he was an invited designer for Border Town, an interdisciplinary studio with other artists and architects in Toronto. His collaborative work has been exhibited at the 2011 Detroit Design Festival and the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennale. For the 2019 IASS Symposium in Barcelona, he engaged in the ecosystems of waste with the collaborative design of a temporary pavilion composed of recycled acrylic heat-formed into shell structures. For PBDW Architects, he worked on residential, commercial, and institutional projects of various scales (2012-2020) including the recently completed design and construction of a K-12 school for children with special needs. He is a licensed architect in New York State.
Jason Geistweidt
Assistant Professor, Media Study
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Jason Geistweidt is an artist and scholar working across the fields of sound composition, physical computing, creative coding, real-time performance systems, and installation. In his creative work he utilizes computation as a means for organizing time and space, invoking the event and creating experience. His current research interests lie in the study of media impermanence and the transitory nature of computation. In 2019 large-scale prints from his twittage project, which procedurally collages images captured from the Twitter firehose, were featured in the group show Unsettling Time at Vanderbilt University and his thoughts on the future of media study appear in the 2020 inaugural issue of MAST. His electroacoustic works have been presented at both the ICMC and NIME conferences. Geistweidt holds a Phd from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast and a Masters from The Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music at The University of Limerick. His amateur radio callsign is KD2SGY.
Mark Shepard
Associate Professor, Architecture and Media Study
Situated Technologies Research Group
Director, CAST
Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose work investigates contemporary entanglements of technology and urban life. He is co-editor of the Situated Technologies Pamphlets Series and editor of Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space, published by MIT Press. He curated Toward the Sentient City, an exhibition organized by the Architectural League of New York that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city through a series of commissioned projects distributed throughout New York City. His work has been presented at museums, galleries and festivals internationally, including the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennial, the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, and the 2009 International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam. His work has been supported by The US Department of Education, The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Creative Capital, and Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, where he was a 2011-2012 Fellow.
Hadas Steiner
Associate Professor, Architecture
Affiliated Faculty, CAST
Hadas A. Steiner teaches architectural history and theory at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She is at work on a manuscript, The Accidental Visitant, which studies the interactions between the modern fields of ornithology and architecture.
Alumni
Name
Role
Dates
Gabrielle Prinz
Adjunct Assistant Professor
2020
Omar Khan
Co-director, Associate Professor
2005–2020
Jelani Lowe
Research Assistant
2018-2019
Jordan Geiger
Assistant Professor
2009–2018
Tim Noble
Research Assistant
2018
William Baptiste
Research Assistant
2018
Mahan Mehrvarz
Research Assistant
2014–2016
