June 5th,  PhD student (completing her second year at UCSC), game maker and crafter, Kate Compton came on the radio to talk about her research and practice.

Kate was in the game industry for five years working on such games as Spore and SimCity, gaining mastery of procedural content generation and simulation techniques, before returning to school.  She is also an enthusiastic game jammer, prototyper, and inventor of novel physical interfaces for computing. She does a lot of crafting, sewing, art, and baking, traditionally women’s activities, as well as a bit of carpentry.  A lot of her research at UCSC is driven by synthesizing crafting with game technologies. She does a lot of work with the laser cutter and 3D printing. For instance, Kate made this pendant-maker iApp.