Camillia Matuk is Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Technology, and director of RIDDLE Lab. She has a PhD in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, an MSc in Biomedical Communications from the University of Toronto, an OCGC in 3D Computer Animation from Sheridan College, and a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Windsor.

Camillia conducts design-based research on learning environments that support scientific thinking, design thinking, and collaborative learning and instruction. Her work has involved the design and implementation of online tools that help middle and high school students document, share, and make sense of ideas during science inquiry. She also designs teacher professional development, and researches how technology-enhanced materials can support teachers in customizing instruction. Her current projects explores the roles of narrative, collaboration, and facilitation in promoting interest and identity within playful co-design contexts, such as afterschool and professional development programs.

Her prior work used clinical interview methods to investigate how people make sense of visual narratives of science, including comics, cartoons, and representations of the evolutionary tree of life. The latter is documented in Narrative spaces in the representation and understanding of evolution, a chapter in the book Evolution Challenges: Integrating Research and Practice in Teaching and Learning about Evolution, published in 2011 by Oxford University Press. Her work has been presented at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), the International Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Educational Research (AERA), and at other conferences in psychology, visualization, games, and the cognitive sciences.

From 2008-2010, Camillia held an SSHRC doctoral fellowship and a Cognitive Science Graduate Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Research Projects. She was a DR-K12 CADRE Fellow from 2010-2011. In 2013, an image annotation tool she designed to support students’ observations of scientific representations won the Outstanding Research Presentation Award from the AERA Design & Technology SIG. In 2015, her study on a tool for tracking and sharing ideas during online science inquiry projects won Best Design Paper at the International Conference for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

Previously, Camillia was a medical illustrator at INVIVO in Toronto. Before joining NYU, she was a postdoc with Marcia Linn on the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE), and lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she taught graduate-level courses on Scientific Thinking and Learning, and Integrating Technology into Secondary English Instruction for PhD and masters and teaching credential students.

Maaike Bouwmeester has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of educational software development, design research and the learning sciences. Her teaching and research focus is on learning design theory and process, experiential learning, and learning methodologies which bridge the divide between theory and practice, especially in professional and graduate education.

Prior to joining the faculty at the Educational Communication and Technology (ECT) program at NYU, Maaike was Vice President of Product Development at Taskstream, an educational software firm, where she led the growth of the Taskstream from a start-up to a 100 employee full-service SaaS company. Taskstream products and services are currently used in over 400 post-secondary educational institutions in the United States.

In her role as VP of Product Development at Taskstream, Maaike led team efforts in design research, strategic product development and planning, UX strategy, and Agile and Lean software development. She was responsible for hiring and managing multiple product development teams. Maaike's innovations in designing learning technologies span a wide range of projects including rubric and e-portfolios tools, data analysis and reporting capabilities, and educator productivity tools.

Maaike Bouwmeester earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan (Sociology and Pre-Med) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University School of Education in the field of Educational Communication and Technology. Before moving into educational technology, Maaike served in the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping, where she was posted overseas in both Croatia and Bosnia.

Jan L. Plass is the inaugural holder of the Paulette Goddard chair in Digital Media and Learning Sciences in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He also co-directs the Games for Learning Institute and is the founding director of the CREATE Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technology in Education. His research is at the intersection of learning science, cognitive sciences, and design, and seeks to enhance the design and effectiveness of visual environments. His current focus is on cognitive and emotional aspects of information design and interaction design of simulations and educational games for science education and second language acquisition. He has received funding for his research from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and, from Microsoft Research, Google Resarch, the Motorola Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and the Hewlett foundation. Dr. Plass received his MA in Mathematics and Physics Education and his Ph.D. in Educational Technologies from Erfurt University (PH Erfurt, Germany).

NYU Institute for Games for Learning

Dr. Plass is Co-Director of the Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), a collaboration of nine partner universities with support from Microsoft Research and the Motorola Foundation. G4LI is dedicated to advancing the design, use, and evaluation of computer games in formal and informal educational settings. The Institute works to provide fundamental scientific evidence of "what works" in games for learning - what makes certain games compelling and playable, and what design elements make games effective for learning. The results provide critically important information to researchers, game developers, and educators, and point the way to a new era of using games for the purpose of learning.

Center for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education

Dr. Plass is the founding director of CREATE, the Center for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education, which is engaged in research on the design, critique, and evaluation of advanced visual technologies for learning. CREATE's mission is to advance the cognitive science and socio-cultural foundations of the educational use of these advanced technologies, develop methods and approaches for the design of technology-based materials based on principles derived from theoretically-sound foundations, implement models, frameworks, and examples of constructionist and instructionist applications based on these methods and principles, and develop and apply methods and criteria for the evaluation of such environments.

Yoav Bergner is an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Educational Technology. He earned an A.B. in physics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Yoav's research bridges psychometrics and learning sciences in pursuit of analysis methods that inform educational design. He is particularly interested in the assessment of learning in Makerspaces/Fablabs, social learning in online environments, physics education, and collaborative problem solving. He co-developed CPSX, an extension for real-time small-group discussion using the Open edX learning management system. His work has been presented at meetings of the International Educational Data Mining Society (EDM), Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK), and the International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS).

Prior to joining NYU, Yoav was a Research Scientist at Educational Testing Service. His post-doctoral path involved five years as a sculptor and a furniture-maker, followed by three years as a teacher in a public early college high school, where he taught science, mathematics, industrial arts, and philosophy of science. Interest in educational data and measurement brought him back to MIT as a research associate in 2011 to work on student modeling in online learning environments, including massive open online courses (MOOCs). From 2013-2016, Yoav was a MacArthur/ETS Edmund W. Gordon Fellow for 21st Century Learning and Assessment.

Kayla DesPortes is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and the Learning Sciences at NYU Steinhardt in the Department of Administration Leadership and Technology. Prior to her appointment she gained a Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Kayla’s research focuses on understanding how to create dynamic, interdisciplinary physical computing environments that stimulate students to use computing as a medium for expression as they learn the fundamentals of computing and electronics. Her work investigates the design of equitable and inclusive learning activities that integrate participatory design methods to scaffold reflections and discussions around culture and values in the context of computing. Within these investigations she also explores the design choices embedded in the educational tools for physical computing. Examining the tools for their potential to support learning, collaboration, and integration with different artistic disciplines, Kayla’s work builds an understanding of how tools can contribute and detract from the ability to promote diverse values in educational computing contexts.

Kayla has received recognition for her work, earning her a Foley Scholarship and a Graduate Engineering Minority (GEM) PhD Engineering Fellowship for her research in equity in computing education at Georgia Tech. Furthermore, her work exploring commercialization of the design of equitable educational technology has led to acquisition of National Science Foundation Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) Grant and Georgia Tech’s Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER) Fellowship.

W. Russell Neuman is a specialist in new media and digital education. He was the John Derby Evans Professor of Media Technology in Communication Studies and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and also taught at the University of Pennsylvania where he directed the Information and Society Program of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. . He served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy working in the areas of information technology, broadband policy and technologies for border security. His recent books include The Gordian Knot: Political Gridlock on the Information Highway (MIT Press, 1997), Media, Technology, and Society: Theories of Media Evolution (University of Michigan Press, 2010). He also taught at Harvard and Yale and was one of the founding faculty of the MIT Media Laboratory. His Ph.D. is from the University of California, Berkeley and his undergraduate degree is from Cornell University. Professor Neuman’s teaching and research focus on educational outcomes, information overload, information economics, modalities of learning, learning assessment and learning outside the classroom.

Xavier Ochoa is Assistant Professor of Learning Analytics in the Department of Administration, Leadership, and Technology of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He is also a member of the Learning Analytics Research Network (LEARN) at NYU. Xavier holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Leuven (Belgium), an M.Sc. in Applied Computer Science Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium) and a B.S. in Computer Science from Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (Ecuador).

Since the start of his research career, Xavier has been working at the convergence point of Education and Technology. His initial work on quantitative analysis and modeling of the production, finding, consumption and reuse of digital learning materials was the first time that a large-scale, in-the-wild study was attempted in the subject. This work conducted his research into the nascent field of Learning Analytics where he was invited as a keynote of the first Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference (LAK). Xavier has been an active researcher in this field, currently being an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics and Vice-president of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). His most recent research interests involve the use of Learning Analytics in physical spaces through multimodal analysis of recordings of learning traces and the improvement of program design using evidence obtained from large amounts of historical academic data.

Xavier Ochoa previously was Principal Professor at the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Ecuador where he directed the Information Technology Center (CTI) and the Teaching and Learning Technology (TEA) research group. He is also a founding member and long-time president of the Latin American Community on Learning Technologies (LACLO). He has also received the Best Researcher Award (2012) and Best Professor Award (2013) at ESPOL and the 5-year best Researcher in Computer Science by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in Ecuador (2014). He has also received several Best Paper Awards at international conferences, including LAK.

Dr Knight's research focuses on how people find, use, and evaluate evidence. His Masters in Philosophy of Education (UCL) analysed the epistemological side of assessment policy, particularly in the context of search engine use. His subsequent work takes an empirical approach to student epistemic cognition - thinking about what we know, and how - particularly in information seeking and writing contexts. Dr Knight has investigated this use of evidence, and epistemic cognition, by exploring the collaborative dialogue of small groups of children (MPhil, Cambridge) and undergraduates (PhD, Open) when using a collaborative browser addon (Coagmento, developed by Rutgers University).

In 2019 Dr Knight was a Visiting Scholar at the Learning Analytics Research Network (LEARN) housed at New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the University College London, Institute of Education. He is 2019 recipient of the UTS Early Career Academic Teaching and Learning Award, and 2017 recipient of a team High Commendation for Teaching and Learning in the Masters of Data Science and Innovation.

Dr Knight is a member of the UTS STEM Education Futures Research Centre.

S. Alex Ruthmann is the Director of the NYU Music Experience Design Lab (MusEDLab), and core faculty in the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL) at NYU Steinhardt. The MusEDLab researches and designs new technologies and experiences for music making, learning and engagement together with industry and community partners including the New York Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Yungu School, Portfolio School, Guitar Mash, Tinkamo, UNESCO, Peer 2 Peer University, League of American Orchestras, and the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. He and his collaborators are the recipients of multiple National Science Foundation grants exploring the interdisciplinary teaching of computational and musical thinking, arts and educational product commercialization strategies, and creative learning through music and media education technologies.

Ruthmann's current research involves collaborations with colleagues in Norway on a project titled Building Sustainable Digital Practices in Kindergarten Literacy and Arts Programmes (DigiSus). DigiSus is a participatory design research project focused on the design and development of interactive arts spaces infused with non-screen-based digital technologies for creative play, music making, design, and story creation. Working with colleagues in Finland on the Notio Project, Ruthmann is researching new approaches to the teaching of music theorizing with students, educators, and researchers in Finnish high schools and universities through songwriting and interactive technologies. Through the NYU Creative Experience Design Lab (CXD Lab) at NYU Shanghai, Ruthmann recently launched a research group focused on creative learning in China. The CXD Lab hosts regular meetups, and collaborates with educational and cultural institutions in China, as well as creative technology startups focused on education, the arts, coding, and AI.

Since launching in 2013, the MusEDLab creative learning and software projects are in active use by over 500,000 people in over 150 countries across the world and include the aQWERTYon, Groove Pizza, MathScienceMusic.org, PlayWithYourMusic.org, and Music Playgrounds, among others. The Groove Pizza app recently cross a milestone of 1,000,000 original grooves created since launch in 2016. In 2018, the MusEDLab opened a branch at NYU's Shanghai campus as part of the Program on Creativity and Innovation. The MusEDLab is a collaborative of over 25 NYU students and program affiliates in New York City and Shanghai.

Ruthmann is Co-Editor of the new Oxford Handbook of Technology and Music Education, and the Routledge Companion to Music, Technology and Education, and co-author of the forthcoming book Scratch Music Projects, an introduction to creative music coding projects in MIT's Scratch. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Music, Technology, and Education, and a member of the editorial/advisory boards of the British Journal of Music Education, Journal of Popular Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education and the Journal of Music and Meaning. In prior years he has served as President of the Association for Technology in Music Instruction, Chair of the Creativity special research interest group of the Society for Research in Music Education, Co-Editor and Managing Editor of the International Journal of Education & the Arts, and Program Director for Music Education at NYU Steinhardt. Ruthmann received an interdisciplinary B.Mus. degree from the University of Michigan in Music and Technology, and M.Mus. and Ph.D. degrees in Music Education from Oakland University. Active in social media, you can follow curated posts on music learning, teaching and technology @musedlab on Twitter.