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Centrally located in the Smithsonian Institute’s new “Futures” exhibition in Washington D.C. is an interactive light sculpture designed by acclaimed New York artist and architect Suchi Reddy, with support from a team of creative technologists that includes renowned multimedia artist and Creative Technology and Design program Lecturer Justin Gitlin. 

T9Hacks kicks off this year at an in-person event on February 18 at 4:30 p.m. at the ATLAS Institute. The seventh-annual hackathon promotes interest in creative technologies, coding, design and making among college women, nonbinary individuals and other groups that are underrepresented in technical fields.

When the 2022 Olympic Games open in Beijing, China on Friday, ATLAS graduate Joanne Reid (ICTD '17) will be among the U.S. athletes, competing against the best of the best in the biathlon, a winter sport that combines rifle sharpshooting with Nordic skiing. 

Limited by materials available at home during the pandemic, ATLAS PhD student Peter Gyory and a team of ACME Lab researchers developed Tinycade—a platform for DIY game controllers that anyone, including novices, can use to design and build arcade-like games using household materials such as cardboard, mirrors and hot glue.

Arielle Dispenza was honored in December as the recipient of the 2021 Charles A. Hutchinson Memorial Teaching Award from ��ƷSM����ӰƬ's College of Engineering and Applied Science. The award annually recognizes one engineering faculty member who has shown consistent dedication to teaching, education and students.

"It's not enough to tell young people to put their phones down," says Annie Margaret, an ATLAS teaching assistant professor who investigates ways to counteract the negative impact of social media on the mental health of teens. In a recent interview with Denver Channel 7 News, she talked about interventions for teens she's developing for a program to be launched over the 2022 summer break.

CTD Capstone is a rigorous, two-semester course sequence required for all Creative Technology & Design majors. Normally taken during the senior year, it involves the completion of a culminating project that goes through multiple rounds of faculty review and iteration. This small collection of project presentations gives a sense of the kind of work students complete in the CTD program.

Longtime university staff member Susan Ramirez-Armstrong (��ƷSM����ӰƬ–Bio‘84) retires at the end of December, wrapping up a 34-year career at ��ƷSM����ӰƬ.

ATLAS recently released a new video that celebrates the ACME Lab and its commitment to designing technologies to support creativity. Directed by Professor Ellen Do, the lab researches computational tools for design, creativity, cognition, tangible and embedded interaction, and computing for health and wellness.

Kari Santos holds an MS in Information and Communication Technology for Development (the track was later renamed Social Impact) from ATLAS Institute's Creative Technology and Design master's program. Before getting