hi, i'm alexis hope.

i am a second-year MS student in the department of human centered design & engineering at the university of washington in seattle. i am interested in using participatory research methods to design technologies to support education and civic engagement. in 2011, i was awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship.

for the past two years, i have led a multidisciplinary team to design, develop, and test a portable ultrasound system for midwives in uganda. this project is advised by beth kolko (human centered design & engineering), gaetano borriello and ruth anderson (computer science & engineering), and robert nathan (radiology). i also help lead hackademia, a project attempting to infect academia with a hacker ethos.

this autumn, i was the instructor for HCDE 418: user experience design. in the winter, i will be developing the curriculum for a new UW engineering course that will focus on using social science research methods to inform technology design.

when i'm not teaching or working on academic projects, i sing, play guitar, take pictures, tinker with electronics, watch too much star trek, and moonlight as a barista at trabant coffee.