Valkyrie Arline Savage

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I study physical input devices (like mice, game controllers, or surgical tools) as the ultimate bridge between humans and computers. My work pushes for a world where such devices, whether explicitly-designed or ad hoc, fit a specific user's needs for a particular time, place, and task, culminating in deeply custom interfaces designed, fabricated, or simply picked up to solve a problem.

I am also fascinated by the interaction between sensing (which takes physical information and digitizes it) and fabrication (which takes digital information and physicalizes it). I enjoy working in the fabrication lab, where we have 3D printers, lasercutters, electronics tools, a CNC mill, and other fun tools; I've explored all kinds of weird fabrication projects with students (3D printing + crochet, 3D printing for underwater, lasercutting slot-together circuits, etc.).

Methodologically, I focus on systems research, where the output of a project is a functional, novel system that users can interact with: many of the contributions of such projects come from algorithms required to make these prototypes work, though for sensing research there is a component of controlled user testing experiments to ensure portability across users.