At any given time, the Media Design Program is running a series of research projects. Some of these take place in the classroom, some in the Media Design Research Studio or N.E.T. Lab, and others happen off campus. Here is an overview of the projects currently running in the program:

The Mediawork Project
An award-wining transmedia publishing initiative, the Mediawork project transforms private theory into public discourse, media experimentation into cultural intervention. Authors include Brenda Laurel, N. Katherine Hayles, Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky, Bruce Sterling, Peter Lunenfeld, and designers Denise Gonzales Crisp, Anne Burdick, COMA Amsterdam/New York, Lorraine Wild, and Mieke Gerritzen.www.mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/mediawork/
Principal Investigator: Peter Lunenfeld. Research Sponsor: Rockefeller Foundation, Jeffrey and Catharine Soros, Art Center College of Design. MDP Research Associate: Anne Burdick. ACCD Research Intern: Christopher Ward. Research Partner: The MIT Press.

Living Profiles
Living Profiles is one of nine teams in Project HealthDesign, an 18-month research project to prototype the personal health record of the future in order to influence U.S. national health policy towards open source standards. Living Profiles explores ways to empower teens with chronic health conditions to better manage their own health and well-being during transition from pediatric care to adult medicine. The research has led to a combination of real-time streaming data tools, ambient technology, and an interface that aggregates data into a teen-specific Quality-of-Life Timeline. www.projecthealthdesign.org/
Principal Investigator: Lisa Nugent. MDP Research Associates: Sean Donahue, Tina Park, Phil van Allen. Research Sponsor: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Research Partners: Stanford University School of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Orange County, and MOTO Development Group. ACCD Research Interns: Laura Janisse, Luke Johnson, Mari Nakano, Hannah Regier, Amy Sheppard, Peter Shultz, Julia Tsao.

New Ecology of Things
The New Ecology of Things (NET) is an ongoing research initiative to explore emerging forms of interactive communication brought about by pervasive networked technologies. The project began as a studio class sponsored by Sun Microsystems Labs and has evolved into a conceptual model, a forum for discussion, an ongoing series of projects, technological inventions, and new issues for design pedagogy. http://newecologyofthings.net/
Principal Investigator: Phil van Allen. Research Sponsors: Sun Microsystems Labs, Art Center Faculty Enrichment Fund. Research Partner: MOTO Development Group.

From Hi-fi to Lo-fi: Sharing digital-born stories in the developing world
Part of Designmatters at Art Center, this project addresses the multi-faceted design challenges of UNICEF’s Story-Sharing Software Project (SSSP). The primary objective will be to develop tools and techniques for sharing stories in communities where high-bandwidth video upload and download are not feasible. This project will be run as a transdisciplinary studio in the Spring 2008.
Principal Investigator: Peter Cho. MDP Research Associate: Miya Osaki. Research Sponsor: ACCD’s Design Matters and UNICEF. Research Partners: UNICEF, mDialog.

Biggest Visual Power Show
The Visual Power Show is an intellectual show whose subject is the image in our society. It is scheduled to take place in May 2008 with the theme NEXT NATURE. With this event we seek to make a creative contribution to the discussion around visual culture and the influence of media, technology and economy on the image.
Project Leads: Mieke Gerritzen and Koerte van Meenswort. Project Sponsor: Dutch Fonds

WRKSHP
The WRKSHP Charrettes are collaborations that bring together some of today’s top minds in the digital design of the humanities. This blue sky initiative contributes to the MDP’s larger research objective of conceptualizing, designing, and promoting new modes of knowledge formation. Principal Investigator: Peter Lunenfeld. MDP Research Associate: Anne Burdick. ACCD Research Intern: Christopher Ward. Research Sponsor: TBA. Research Partners: Cal IT2; Software Studies Group UCSD; New Media, UCB

Impact: Ford Foundation
Principal Investigator: Sean Donahue

Earthquake Research
Principal Investigator: Sean Donahue