Mary Etta West
PhD Student • Visual Lab
Computer Science
mary.west@colorado.edu

Mary Etta West is an electrical design engineer crafting experimental technologies听for applications in computing education, wearables and robotics. She听is from Las Vegas, Nevada,听where she earned a Bachelor听of Science in electrical engineering, and then went on to design products and tools, and to create听resources for the world's largest solar plant: Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System as well as for听SparkFun Electronics and Boulder Engineering Studio.听 Mary's current research explores equality, equity听and identity expression in tech and maker culture. She is a first-year computer science听PhD student working with the VisuaLab, the Laboratory for Playful Computation听and the Human Interaction and Robotics (HIRO) Group. Mary is advised by听Danielle Szafir,听Joel Swanson听and听Ben Shapiro.听

Opaletta is a line of electronic and programmable jewelry currently in development with her design company Oublietta听Electronics. She believes electronics could be听more听wearable and fashionable and extend the possibilities for self-exploration and identity expression. She is driven to accomplish this not only with jewelry but with MR/AR, connected and programmable clothing, closet management, garment selection听and fabric manipulation.听 When Mary isn't printing PCBs or experimenting with new materials, she can be found in Stardew Valley.听

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Publications

  • Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez,听Netta Ofer,听Shanel Wu,听Mary Etta West,听Mirela Alistar听and听Laura Devendorf.听2022. Exploring Biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction. In听Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 鈥�22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1525-1529.听听(June 13-17, 2022鈥擵irtual Event, Australia).听

  • S. Sandra Bae,听Clement Zheng,听Mary Etta West,听Ellen Yi-Luen Do,听Samuel Huron,听Danielle Albers Szafir听(2022). "Making Data Tangible: A Cross-disciplinary Design Space for Data Physicalization." Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. (April 30 - May 5, 2022鈥擭ew Orleans, USA.)听听, see video听, and short presentation听.

  • W. Payne, Y. Bergner,听M. West,听C. Charp, R. B. Shapiro,听D. Albers Szafir, E. Taylor, & K. DesPortes. 2021. danceON: Culturally Responsive Creative Computing for Data Literacy. (to appear) In听Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021)/听Yokohama, Japan鈥揗ay 8-13, 2021)听[Best Paper Honorable Mention]. DOI:.

  • Annie Kelly,听Christine Chang,听Chris听Hill, Mary West, Mary Yoder, Joseph Polman, Shaun Kane, Michael Eisenberg, and R. Benjamin Shapiro. 2020. 鈥淥ur Dog Probably Thinks听Christmas Is Really Boring鈥�: Re-mediating Science Education for Feminist-inspired Inquiry.听ICLS 2020: 听Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences.10.22318/icls2020.935 (Nashville, Tennessee (virtual)鈥揓une 19-23 2020).

  • S. Sandra Bae and Mary Etta West. 2021. Cyborg Crafts: Second SKIN (Soft Keen INteraction). In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 87, 1鈥�3. DOI: (Salzburg, Austria (virtual) Feb. 14-19, 2021).

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In the news

The four projects presented by ATLAS at DIS'22
ATLAS research front and center at DIS鈥�22

June 29, 2022

Researchers from ATLAS Institute's Unstable Design, THING, Living Matter and Superhuman Computing labs presented four papers, including three that received 鈥淗onorable Mention鈥� awards, at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22).

Biofoam
DIS'22: Living Matter and Unstable Design labs introduce biofoam

June 21, 2022

Exploring biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction, authored by Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf introduced the DIS audience to biofoam, a water soluble and biodegradable material that can be made conductive.

CHI 2022 logo
ATLAS@CHI2022

April 28, 2022

ATLAS researchers will present six published works and two workshops at the 2022 ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), the world鈥檚 preeminent forum for the field of human-computer interaction. The conference, commonly referred to as 鈥淐HI,鈥� will be held hybrid-onsite April 30-May 6, 2022 in New Orleans.

Chi logo of waves
ATLAS @ CHI 2021

May 14, 2021

ATLAS researchers have 10 published works and one special interest group associated with the CHI 2021 conference, the world鈥檚 preeminent conference for the field of human-computer interaction. Held virtually, CHI 2021, also known as ACM鈥檚 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, took place May 8-13.