I’m a graduate student with the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. My research interests are in the design of technologies and experiences to empower everyday people, especially kids, to design and build their own creations. I’m also interested in extending computer science education for K-12, initiatives that encourage more women to pursue computer science, and human computer interaction.
Feel free to contact me at ria (at) mit (dot) edu.
Before coming to Media Lab, I worked jointly as a coordinator for Project GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically) from the Santa Fe Institute and as a software developer for the Office of STEM Education Partnerships (OSEP) in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. Before coming to Northwestern, I was a lead developer of the StarLogo TNG project at the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program. I graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2006 and Master of Engineering in Computer Science in 2007. For my MEng work, I developed OpenBlocks, an open source framework to create block programming environments. Check out my projects to learn more.