Integrating Art and Engineering for Innovation and Education

Jill Fantauzzacoffin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Digital Media program, advised by Jay Bolter. Jill's artwork installations incorporate high technology and interactivity, and often produce novel interactive technologies. Her current artwork-in-progress has spun off a series of haptic (touch-based) technologies which have led to a patent application filing through Georgia Tech and a Georgia Research Alliance commercialization grant. These flexible, high-resolution haptic technologies hold promise in the cell-phone and videogame controller industries as well as in therapeutic textiles addressing SIDS and PTSD. Jill has also initiated and carried out NSF research comparing the creative practices of artists and engineers. She incorporated the study results into an NSF-funded, experimental, project-based course in integrated art and engineering for undergraduate students at Georgia Tech which she taught last Spring. The course focused on training students to work along the spectrum of art and engineering and thus build the ability to live creative lives in the creative innovation economy.

From 2005 - 2006 Jill was a visiting research fellow at the Institut für Elektronik at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. In 2010, Jill was awarded top graduate student instructor university-wide by CETL. She was a Presidential Scholar in Digital Media, as well as co-founded and co-chaired the Digital Media community at CHI. Jill is currently working as a GRA in the Office of the Provost on special projects in engineering education.

For more detail, please see my CV.

BTW, I am not the only artist-inventor. A list of artist-inventors is kept at artsactive.net.