Jeffrey Boyd is a doctoral student in Computer Science and Engineering with an emphasis in Arts, Media, and Engineering. He works in AME's Biofeedback lab, with a goal to provide better physical therapy for stroke survivors.

"I've known for a long time that I enjoy solving problems and working with computers," he says. "I realized a little later that I also enjoy working with people. The AME program, in my opinion, is a great program that combines my ambitions to work with computers and humans. The various labs are very human-centric and encompass many disciplines."

In addition to Boyd's SFAz fellowship, he also is a NSF IGERT Fellow, and has received a technology grant from Intel Research for portable sensing devices. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Brigham Young University.

Suneth Attygalle, pursuing a PhD in bioengineering with a specialization in arts media engineering, combines his interests in digital media, computer music, interactive technology and neuroscience/neural engineering. He wants his research to benefit those who are rehabilitating from a stroke, as well as other applications.

"My focus of study has been to integrate bioengineering principles of neural plasticity and motor control with an immersive multimedia stroke training program," he says. Two aspects of his research are developing devices for functional assessment of stroke recovery and using heart rate variability to assess mental states during various tasks, particularly during stroke rehabilitation training. "For the future I am considering how to incorporate neuro-imaging techniques to better understand the stroke rehabilitation process."

Attygalle has a National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) fellowship in experiential media as well as an SFAz fellowship. He received his Bachelor of Science in biological engineering from Cornell University.

Brandon Mechtley is in a 5-year Ph.D program in Computer Science with a concentration in Arts, Media and Engineering. He is discovering ways to use media and technology to model interactive scenarios for exploration and decision-making in sustainability issues.

"In the long term, I hope to create systems that can help bridge the gaps between the community and policy makers to show how they can work together to promote sustainable growth," he says. Working with students and faculty in AME and the Global Institute of Sustainability, he helped create a multimodal interaction that can allow a user to explore complex population dynamics, and they are currently working on developing a system that can be used to mediate water management issues in Arizona.

Mechtley participates in the Segmentation, Indexing, and Retrieval of Environmental and Natural Sounds (SIRENS) group to create a system that can eventually retrieve sounds through novel query-by-example and query-by-humming techniques. He has also worked within the Embodied and Mediated Learning group in AME to create interactive learning scenarios.

In addition to the SFAz fellowship, Mechtley has received the National Science Foundation IGERT Award and a scholarship from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at ASU. During his undergraduate work, he participated in the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI), working within AME. He graduated from ASU summa cum laude with a Bachelor in Science in Computer Science.