Faculty Researchers & Projects
Students learn from award-winning faculty and benefit from being part of world-class research taking place on campus. Projects position design thinking within the history of innovation, cultural theory, and to address contemporary local and global challenges.
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All the Stars We Cannot See
With the goal to increase public exposure to space traffic density, Dr. Megan Smith and PhD student Gao Yujie have created All the Stars We Cannot See, an immersive installation that geographically situates participants in a virtual sky where they can gaze up in real time at over 25,000 satellites as they fly overhead.
Smith and Gao are working to render visible the impact of satellite density in the sky, and to share information on the presence of technology surveillance globally.
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Engineering meets design
Dr. Chau is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. He teaches courses in calculus, electromagnetics, computational electrodynamics, and entrepreneurship.
He is interested in basic questions about the momentum of light and in the development of technologies that harness light at nanometre size scales.
Kenneth Chau
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering
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Creative Ways of Learning
Teaching creativity and the creative process is about building capacity and confidence to approach a holistic way of finding solutions to challenges we face as a society. This is a philosophy that guides Aleksandra Dulic, professor of visual arts and digital media. For Dulic, the way she leads her students in her research projects, does not differ from how she teaches her students in the classroom—she works with her students to discover their values, personal voices, and the importance of the projects they want to work on.
Aleksandra Dulic
Associate Professor, Media Studies
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Holistic approach to entrepreneurship
With a background in chemistry and entrepreneurship, Dr. Eisenstein champions experiential learning pedagogy to develop entrepreneurial and professional skills in students.
Prior to arriving at UBC Okanagan, Dr. Eisenstein led the development and teaching of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Impact Centre, with particular focus on using experiential learning and work-integrated learning pedagogies.
Alon Eisenstein
Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship & Technical Communication
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Design meets innovation
Dr. Megan Smith is a new media artist who bridges physical computing within virtual and augmented reality environments. Her practice-based research blends with critical design methods to effectively build immersive environments. In particular, she has become a leader in use-of-force VR development. In her Critical Making Lab, she is building a multi-user VR environment with moveable ‘smart’ props that incorporate haptic and biometric feedback to increase the illusion of risk within the VR situation, and add moments for human touch, smell and other sensations such as wind and temperature.
Megan Smith
Associate Professor, Creative Studies & Media Studies
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Grad improves women's lives in Africa
Vida Yakong, a UBC Okanagan graduate student from Ghana, has returned from Washington DC where she spent four days as a guest of the World Bank.
It was an important trip for Yakong—and one that could lead to improved health care for women and children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Students like Yakong bring a unique perspective to a program like that of the Master of Design.
