Son

Resume

Introverted and iNtuitive. Feeling and perceiving. Arts & technology for creativity, inspiration, and education.

Live from the stage/performing ‘A chunk of trauma’

Live from the stage/performing ‘A chunk of trauma’ in the final presentation of ‘Spoken Word’ class at UCSB (Circus Herpes, Ostentation County and Carrots: Kip Fulbeck’s Student Show “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece” is a Wild Success | The Daily Nexus)

 
 

Jungah Son

UX/UI Designer with 9 years of experience in user-centered design, academic research, and data analysis. Skilled in prototyping, creative tool development, and medical image processing. Passionate about designing innovative solutions that merge art, technology, and user experience. Experienced in teaching and mentoring in areas like art & technology and academic writing, with a focus on fostering creativity and critical thinking in students.

Education

Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 2023

Research emphases: Affective computing, virtual reality, creativity tool, interactional approach

Committee: Marko Peljhan (Co-Chair), George Legrady (Co-Chair), Tobias Höllerer, Misha Sra

M.S. in Radiation Applied Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Conducted independent research in Functional & Molecular Imaging System Lab, focused on anisotropic diffusion and total variation image reconstruction

B.E. in Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea

Professional Experience

UX/UI Designer - College Sauce, Santa Barbara, CA January 2024-May 2024

  • Implemented a leaderboard in Flutter, applying what was learned about design to real life applications that will likely become part of the company's permanent identity

  • Volunteering around the Santa Barbara area to define early design concepts and craft elegant solutions for delivering a compelling customer experience

Graduate Student Researcher - Media Arts and Technology, UCSB, CA September 2016-September 2023

  • Built 2 user interfaces in MATLAB to investigate ways to generate abstract images through Dynamic Mode Decomposition/Kandinsky’s Analytical Drawing

  • Designed a computational tool to assist a user in recoloring drawings based on 4 user emotions (happy, sad, angry, relaxing) by using facial emotion detection and k-means clustering to help users express their emotions better

  • Created emoPaint, a virtual reality application that allows users to create paintings with 18 emotion-based brushes and expressive textures, in Unity

  • Developed emoBrush, a virtual reality application designed to help awareness and express emotion, in Unity

Public Humanities Graduate Fellow - Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB, CA March 2019-September 2023

  • Launched an education website (https://foodbanksbc.org/foodboss) for a FoodBoss curriculum as a Food Literacy Training Intern and worked 20 hours per week for 10 weeks starting June 15, 2020 for a total of 200 hours

  • Completed 2 seminar courses, “History and Theory of Public Humanities” and “Skills for the Public Sphere”

  • Delivered a 7-8 minute public presentation, followed by a Q&A panel with other Public Humanities Fellows, about training, work, and identity as a public humanist

Research Intern - Four Eyes Lab, UCSB, CA July 2014-September 2014

  • Implemented an artifact removal algorithm based on Adaptive SWT-based Denoising (EEG Preprocessing)

  • Published results in part of the proceedings in the ACM Digital Library

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Teaching Assistant - University of California, Santa Barbara, CA January 2015-March 2022

  • Led a section and critiques, and evaluated projects for Art, Science and Technologies

  • Directed two sections and graded written assignments for Playful Spaces: A Cultural History of Games

  • Managed 12 students' use of programming in a wide range of projects for Introduction to Computer Programming in the Arts

  • Taught discrete mathematics and graded homework & examinations for Foundations of Computer Science

  • Led two sections, and graded homework assignments and exams for Multimedia Systems

  • Taught MATLAB in two sections for Introduction to Programming

  • Guided two discussion sections, held office hours, and reviewed programming assignments and written assignments for Introduction to Computer Vision

LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE

Mentor - Research Mentorship Program, UCSB, CA June 2023-August 2023

  • Supervised two research projects for high school students

  • Research projects entitled: ‘Pictoforte: Constructing Electronic Instruments Based on Image Border Properties’ and ‘Optimizing Noise Reduction Filters to Improve Clarity in Ultrasound Liver Images’

Student Leader - Light and Life Isla Vista, UCSB, CA September 2014-June 2017

  • ‘Light and Life’ is a student organization and multicultural church serving the communities of Isla Vista, California

  • Secured meeting sites, recruited students, planned student events, and served the local homeless community with a weekly lunch program

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Primary Languages: Objective C | C++ | C# | MATLAB

Secondary Languages: Python | Processing | Java | MIPS Assembly

Software Knowledge: Knowledgeable in virtual reality application development

Languages: Native in Korean | Fluent in English

GRANT AWARDS

  • Visual, Performing, and Media Arts Award, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB

  • Graduate Collaborative Award, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

  • Jungah Son, Marko Peljhan, and George Legrady, “Reflection on Abstract Art through Kandinsky’s Teaching: Reflection on Abstract Art through Reconstruction of Kandinsky’s Teaching at the Bauhaus,” SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Art Papers. Sydney, Australia, Dec. 12 – 15, 2023.

  • Jungah Son, Marko Peljhan, George Legrady, and Misha Sra, “A Computational Tool for Recoloring Based on User Emotions”, Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Oct. 8 – 12, 2023.

  • Jungah Son, Marko Peljhan, George Legrady, and Misha Sra, “Design of an Emotion-Aware Painting Application With an Interactional Approach for Virtual Reality,” International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW). The MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Sep. 10 – 13, 2023.

  • Jungah Son and Misha Sra, “Exploring Emotion Brushes for a Virtual Reality Painting Tool,” Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. Osaka, Japan, Dec. 8 – 10, 2021.

  • Mathieu Rodrigue, Jungah Son, Barry Giesbrecht, Matthew Turk, and Tobias Höllerer, “Spatio-Temporal Detection of Divided Attention in Reading Applications Using EEG and Eye Tracking,” Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. Atlanta, Georgia, Mar. 29 – Apr. 1, 2015.

  • Jungah Son, Soo Mee Kim, and Jae Sung Lee, “A strategy to reduce blocky pattern and contrast loss in emission tomography reconstruction with reduced angular sampling and total variation minimization,” Biomed Eng Lett., vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 362-369, 2014.