Kathleen Brandt

Kathleen Brandt is Assistant Professor in the Industrial and Interaction Design Program at Syracuse University in New York, and director of Thinklab, an experimental laboratory and collaboration environment for transdisciplinary thinking. She has taught in Industrial Design as well as Electronic Media Art programs since 1998. She holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Integrated Electronic Art Program, and has developed a body of exhibited work merging computation, videography, and information visualization.

Professor Brandt’s art and design work has been supported by Imagining America, Franklin Furnace and the New York State Council on the Arts, and has been exhibited at various venues, including the Museum of Modern Art and SIGGRAPH.

Prior to her teaching work, Kathleen served as Director of the Massachusetts Artist Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Artist Foundation and as an Associate Systems Analyst at Baybank Inc..

Her ongoing academic research is centered around the confluence of design and systems thinking, and advocates for a renewed ethic of more rigorous transdisciplinary design research. Current work seeks to create new resources for innovative and responsible research models for designers. She is a founder of Thinklab, an ambient-media research and collaboration environment for structured, transdisciplinary collaboration, funded by the Transdisciplinary Media Studio at Syracuse University.

Brian Lonsway

Brian Lonsway is Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University. Brian is an architectural theorist studying how built environments materialize cultural values, especially in the context of the professionalization and commercialization of design practices since the 20th century. His first book, Making Leisure Work: Architecture and the Experience Economy, surveys the evolution and convergence of these histories, and explores new theories of civic agency within consumer-centric landscapes.

His current research is centered on exploring the inherent transdisciplinary of design, and the intersection of disciplinary and professional identities with alternative models of design practice. He is co-founding co-director of Thinklab, an experimental media environment and situation room for complex thinking designed to explore and foster alternative practices of transdisciplinary design inquiry.