Six professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder have been selected to receive research grants from the Lab for New Media Strategy and Design.
The lab, located in CU-Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is an initiative funded by Omnicom, the world聮s largest communications holding company. Omnicom聮s current interactive holdings include Agency.com, Organic, Red Sky Interactive, Rapp Digital, Eisnor Interactive, Nuforia, Razorfish and @tmosphere.
The lab is a multidisciplinary initiative with strong industry affiliation. It is intended to provide a highly innovative and collaborative environment for research and creative projects investigating essential questions regarding human interaction within the digital environment.
It also is intended to foster relationships between the interactive industry and the university in an effort to facilitate an exchange of ideas and provide necessary technological resources for interactive research and creative projects.
David Slayden, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Michael Lightner, professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, serve as co-directors of the lab. According to Slayden, their advisory board considered projects that demonstrated synergy with the research theme and the teaching mission and an emphasis on strategy, technology and design research.
"The lab聮s intent is to leverage existing research and creative activities and provide seed funding for new opportunities," Slayden said. "The proposals were chosen because of their demonstrated synergy with the theme and the interactive industry."
Support for the research and creative projects total $100,000. The maximum award amount is $20,000. Slayden and Lightner will work with awardees to help identify further funding sources and to develop partnerships with industry and appropriate governmental or private foundations.
Following are the award recipients:
o Mark Amerika and Jim Johnson, department of fine arts: "An On-demand and E-book Series"
o Len Ackland, School of Journalism and Mass Communication: "Rocky Flats Virtual Museum/interpretive site"
o Clarence Ellis, department of computer science: "An Agent-Based Workware System for Real-Time Interaction Support"
o Gerry Stahl, Center for LifeLong Learning and Design, Institute of Cognitive Science: "New Media to Support Collaborative Knowledge-Building: Beyond Consumption and Chat"
o Julia Frey, department of French and Italian: "Toulouse-Lautrec Online"
The Lab offers three fundamental benefits to the partnering interactive companies: It provides excellent entry-level talent, it serves as an innovation center for CU-Boulder faculty and students working on industry-driven projects and it serves as a site of experimentation, where future applications can be developed.
For information regarding the curriculum, contact David Slayden at (303) 735-1906 or david.slayden@colorado.edu and Michael Lightner at (303) 492-3646 or lightner@colorado.edu.
The lab is part of CU-Boulder聮s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, which provides undergraduate students with a liberal arts foundation and solid professional preparation in advertising, media studies, news-editorial, broadcast news or broadcast production management. Graduate students specialize in environmental journalism, newsgathering, integrated marketing communication and media studies.