Leah Welch

After working as the Design Director for ModMan Enterprises in Los Angeles, Leah left the world of branding to work in education as both a design teacher and an administrator. She is ready to re-enter the design industry, shifting from selling things to telling stories. She is especially interested in designing interactive spaces that utilize information graphics.

Leah just relocated from rural Arizona, but is no stranger to New England winters, having obtained her BA in History of Art from Middlebury College. She is also a new mama.

Margaret Libby Thomas

LIBBY THOMAS is an information designer and illustrator based in bustling Boston, MA. In 2016, she graduated with a BS in Business Management and Marketing from BYU’s Marriott School of Management. Two years on Lucidchart’s award-winning Creative/Marketing teams sparked Libby’s passion for design that is both beautiful and useful. She is pursuing an MFA in Information Design and Data Visualization at Northeastern University, and will graduate Spring 2020.

When she’s not surprising her professors with intricate origami resumes, Libby enjoys camping, playing guitar, listening to audiobook biographies, and jetting home to wander the deserts of Southern Utah.

John Lilly

My current graduate work allows me to use design principles and data analysis to more effectively and efficiently convey ideas and information. I am more tech savvy having learned various software programs and computer languages. I have been fortunate to work closely and collaboratively with students and faculty from around the world, many of whom are at the top of their fields. While my past education and work experience has given me a strong foundation in communication skills and relationship building, I am fortunate for the opportunity to modernize and expand my skills for the twenty–first century.

Erin Shackelford

Erin is currently the Assistant Director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is completing a Master’s Certificate in Information Design and Visualization She is especially interested in visualization and design work that informs policy, especially related to inequality, climate, cities, and democracy.

Rachel Peterson

Anni Xu

Arushi Singh

Arushi comes with a background in electronics engineering and UX design with three years of industrial experience as UX designer at Microsoft India R&D center and Samsung Research. She is an ardent believer in the user-centered design process with deep interests in UX Research, prototyping, user interface design, and information visualization. She believes good design is the missing jigsaw puzzle between technology and human goals. She is also an avid blogger and regularly writes about design and other topics.

YuQing Liu

Coming from backgrounds in information system and data journalism, I employ data as vehicles for information delivery. What excites me the most? Data-driven art, visualization and information design - anything that involves storytelling and a technical challenge, I'm into. I like well-designed visualizations with storytelling, I believe functionality is as important as aesthetics, simplicity emphasizes the stories while eliminating distractions.

Yingyin Xu

I received my BA degree in Studio Arts from University of Massachusetts in Boston. I like painting by different media, fine arts can have people happy, design could have people feel comfortable in their life. I would explore how to combine fine arts with design.

Janice Lin

Janice Lin graduated from Northeastern University in the May of 2019 with her PharmD. During her clinical year of pharmacy, she saw the struggle of patients in engaging with their own care due to a lack of understanding. Janice believes that information is power. She hopes to be able to garner the skills to design better patient-centered materials to help bridge the gap between health care professionals and patients. She is excited to embark on this new chapter to discover more creative ways to improve patient care.

Aside from the large role that health plays in her life, Janice draws inspiration from the beauty in nature and music.

Ellen Bechtel

Ellen was raised by a creek in central Pennsylvania. She was a science fair nerd and studied geology and environmental studies at Wellesley College, and has worked as a bike mechanic. She now is a frame finisher for a titanium bicycle frame building company, making a custom graphic design for each person with a lot of power tools and some electrical magic.

She loves the intersection of tricky, technical knowledge and beautiful, useful things, and she loves teaching and communicating the tricky stuff contained within complex system.

Nicholas Brown

Liz Kantak

Liz Kantak was born in and raised in Atlanta, but spent their undergraduate years as a Mountaineer in wild and wonderful West Virginia. After graduating with a BFA in Graphic Design from WVU in 2016, they promptly dove into a few different job industries that had nothing to do with Design! Or so they thought... they have worked as a rowing coach, a bicycle technician, and have even cycled across the continental US twice in the last three years.

Yue Zhang

I consider myself one part of designer and one part of artist.

After graduating in 2017, I went to Chiba University in Japan as a half-year exchange student.

After I came back from Japan, I worked as a graphic designer. I do art, graphic design, user experience design. But I love painting the most.

Yuke Li

Ning Su

Ning Su joined Anhui University in China in 2014. Her major was Visual Communication Design at that time. It was a 2 years+2 years exchange program. Then she came to the US and became a junior student at California State University, San Marcos in 2016 and her major was Visual & Performing Arts. After graduation in May 2018, she started her OPT and worked for several companies as a graphic designer.

Yinan Dong

Gefei Tian

Andrea Toro

Andrea graduated with an MS in exercise science from Northeastern University in the spring of 2018. During her time at Northeastern, she discovered the importance of data visualization while taking a statistics course, which led her to complete the Information Design graduate certificate. Now, she’s back for her MFA and focused on how to turn complex physiological data into interactive and engaging experiences that can motivate and educate people to be healthier.

Andrea holds a BBA from Loyola University Maryland and has worked as a consultant testing web and mobile applications in various industries. Andrea currently works at CREW, a startup in the connected fitness space.

Chang Li

Lily (Chang) received her B.A. in Interior Design at Wentworth Institute of Technology. After 4 years of college, she decided to try another design besides Interior Design. She believes design industry is connected. Her passion has always been learning new stuff and exploring new thing in life.

Yuan Hua

Yuan Hua holds a B.A.E in Educational Technology at Donghua University where she studied various media software and explored her design interest. And she has 1-year working experience as a digital planner intern at an advertising company, taking charge of project planning and APP design. She always wants to be a human-centered designer by discovering what people need and using design to solve their problems. And She is especially interested in integrating the interactive form and information visualization to create the project with attracting interface and better user experience.

Siyue Tan

Hello, my name is Siyue Tan, which in Mandarin translates to “thinking and reading”. I started drawing and reading since age 6 and was deeply influenced by literature, musicals，archeology and Discovery Channel. I received my B.F.A degree in Illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design, currently working in my friend’s studio as a freelance designer and art director. In my work I strive to convey the same sense of whimsy, hopefulness, and drive that I valued so much in art and culture.

Li Xiao

Yi Chia Cheng

I studied English Language and Humanities in Taipei and Oslo. Was originally trained to be a teacher but later found strong interest making graphs and charts.
By doing Marketing & Communication work for Japanese fashion magazine and HR consulting firm, I got experience of managing social channels, conducting survey fieldwork and analyzing final results independently. For almost everything I've done in this field, I believe in selling ideas with numbers and visualized data.

Ashley Howard

Todd Linkner

Todd has a background in branding, graphic design, user-experience design, and interaction design. He has worked with clients ranging in scope from small grassroots non-profits to enterprise-scale global corporations and has designed for a wide variety of web-based, mobile, desktop, and embedded systems.
Todd holds a BFA in graphic design and printmaking from the University of Michigan.

Matthew Brudner

With a background in immunology, Matt’s experience with information design comes from presenting clinical research data to inform scientists, doctors and investors on the efficacy of candidate vaccines for herpes virus. In addition to generating clinical trial data, Matt has performed early discovery research to screen potential vaccines for Ebola virus, Dengue virus, Chikungunya virus, Cytomegalovirus and many others. Matt also has experience presenting research methods and scientific background to give a better understanding of how immunological data is acquired and interpreted. Through NEU Information Design and Visualization program, Matt’s goal is to learn new skills to make complex biological issues and large data sets and more accessible and easier to understand, especially in the context of public health.

Matt holds a BS in Biology from Northeastern University and has 10 years of laboratory experience. His interests include reading a good book on a rainy day, looking at strange bugs, aquariums, and baseball in general. Matt doesn't care for wintry mix.

Danielle Parisi

Danielle (Dani) Parisi is a graphic designer who loves finding bold and playful ways to solve creative problems. Originally from the Hudson Valley in N.Y., she moved to the Greater Boston Area in hopes of making the best of her design career. Dani currently works as a Design Associate on Northeastern's Advancement Communications team, while doing occasional freelance projects on the side. When she isn't huddled over her MacBook, you can find her buried in a variety of nerdy media, baking something sweet, playing the flute, leveling up at a local climbing gym, or cosplaying at pop culture conventions.

Ziyi Zhao

Dan Spector

A lot of my work involves graphic design, coding, and data. I'm also a writer. My dream is to combine everything and change the way people think about a story. Some fields that interest me include data journalism, public policy, and futurism.

In various lives, I've called Philly, Ithaca, and Boston home. (I've been through many winter coats!) I have a B.A. in government from Cornell.

In my free time, I'm usually buried in a book or playing guitar.

Stephen Costa

Stephen Costa is a graduate of Northeastern University holding a BFA in Graphic Design. He currently works for the City of Boston and hopes to use the skills learned in this program to increase communication and transparency between government agencies and their constituents. His interests include reading, brand design, and cooking.

Kate Kryder

Kate is a visual translator, helping experts communicate complex ideas through graphics. Her recent work includes visualizations for financial planning, construction reports, and environmental consulting. When not tinkering with her latest visual, you can find her exploring the world of ancient sports or plotting ways to grow a full-sized forest inside her apartment.

John McDonough

Originally from Maine but have lived in Boston for over 10 years. Currently work at Northeastern as an Instructional Designer, almost 2 years now. Looking forward to the program and learning new skills.

Siyuan Sun

I graduated from Communication program in Communication University of China. I like singing, drawing and traveling.

Qingyue Li

With a Bachelors of Architecture degree from Virginia Tech, I will continue to incorporate design with communication and technology within the Information Design and Visualization MFA program. Through curiosity, empathy and passion I want to bring more meaningful design to life.

Cara Frankowicz

Cara holds a BM in Violin Performance from Berklee College of Music. She has an established professional career as a fiddle player and teacher, specializing in Irish traditional music. For the past eight years, Cara worked in the field of international student advising, where she developed creative ways to simplify and visualize complicated immigration and administrative processes for English language learners of all levels. Cara is studying design because she wants to help a wider audience understand complex data and processes through culturally competent visualizations, particularly in legal and governmental settings. She is also interested in exploring how data visualization can support music pedagogy and appreciation.

Cara continues to perform and teach fiddle around the Boston area.

Shing Yun Chiang

With journalism background, I desire to build abilities in the area of Information
Design and Visualization, using the power of data to solve real problems.

Zhengyan Yu

Zhengyan Yu is a life explorer, who had lived in Taipei and Beijing for years. He got bachelor and master degrees in Economics. In his free time, he loves reading, traveling and photography. After having some working experiences in economic research, public relations and journalism, he decided to explore the beauty of data and now he is on the way.

Divya Srinivasan

My name is Divya Srinivasan. I am an Architect and Entrepreneur from Bangalore, India.
I am inspired and motivated through my travelling experiences and relish photography which helps me retain and translate memories, inspire my work. I enjoy new cultures, lifestyles, habits and heritage. Finding solutions to everyday challenges is my most important facet.

Anqi Liu

I was born and raised in Beijing, China. I decided to study in Arlington Catholic High School when I was 16 years old. I graduated from ACHS in 2012. In the same year, she joined Northeastern University and began to learn Financial Accounting and Management and International Affairs. (minor) I will graduate on July 2016 from NEU. I love cats, dogs and small animals. I will do some volunteer jobs in my free time.

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee

Gabrielle received her B.A. in Communication Design from Washington University in St. Louis. She has always been drawn to the challenge of organizing information in a beautiful and understandable way and spent the past several years working as an information designer mainly for financial and health care clients. She is interested in using design and data visualization to tell meaningful stories about health, injustice, politics and other social issues.

Sarah Campbell

Sarah received her B.A. in Art and Statistics at the University of Minnesota where she studied visual creativity and data analysis exclusive to one another. After spending the last two years in a quantitative program within the financial industry, she is excited to continue analyzing information while shifting her focus to its visual interpretation. She is particularly interested in exploring the visualization of sociological information, specifically related to cross-cultural and intracultural dynamics.

Jiang Muling

Muling Jiang, holding her Bachelor degree in Architecture from HUST & Master degree in Urban Design from The University of Hong Kong, once worked as an architect at AECOM and as an intern designer at UBER in China. Her interests lie in music, traveling and cooking.

Antonio Solano

Born and raised in Costa Rica, I have a B.Eng. in Industrial Design with a specialization in User Experience. I’m particularly interested in visualizations for public health, bioinformatics and genetics and have designed dashboards to visualize protein data and genetic mutations. Above all, I believe design can leverage data for scientists and researchers and help them understand complex problems more easily.

Zeynep Ozturk

I studied Visual Arts and Communication Design in Sarajevo and following that I mostly worked as freelance graphic designer and video editor and I love cats.

Liuhuaying Yang

Liuhuaying holds a BA and an MS in Applied Psychology and has 2 years working experience in APP design. She is full of love and curiosity for both life and design.

Navarjun Grewal

I am a Computer Science Graduate.I have worked with iOS platform for more than 2.5 years. I worked as an Product Manager, iOS Lead for a company named ClickLabs, and now working as a freelancer. I believe Computing machines these days are getting so powerful that a person having a possession of one can do great things. But that power comes at the cost of complexity, which stops anyone to leverage the power of computers. I think design can solve a lot of those problems.

Andrew Tang

Andrew has a background in scientific illustration where he has focused on turning complex ideas into simple yet meaningful solutions. The push to big data and his interest in visually conveying information has lead him into this program. He hopes to be able to create art while bringing out inherent qualities from the raw data.

Erica Gunn

Erica likes making complicated things simple. Coming from a background in chemistry and teaching, she also has a love of data and science communication. She is studying design to find creative ways of displaying scientific information that change how we think about and interact with data.

Jiani Zheng

Xinhe Yu

Xinhe has a BA in Communication and minor for Studio Art in the University of Colorado, Denver. She loves learning more about design in the future, even she never have this kind of experience before.She still have much more passion in it. She hopes she could use her experience in different field to learn and explore in information visualizations.

Yi Yang

I'm Yi Yang. My background is Industrial Design. I've taken a class in Introduction of Information Design and I just love it. I'm also interested in architecture and urban planning. The interdisciplinary of this program attracts me most.

Muhe Yang

Yike Si

Lorenzo Scarpelli

He has been shaped around an artistic background. He is always been interested in create a conscience over complex social issue, Information design and Data Visualization is the way he wants to use to create this conscience. Design for the people.

Jessie Richards

Jessie recently graduated from UF with degrees in advertising, studio art and web design. She hopes to explore ways design and information can affect our actions and effect change. She loves cooking, creating pottery and sailing in the Caribbean.

Siyu Pan

Originally from China. She was majored in interior design for one and half years in Indiana University-Bloomington. Siyu got her BA in Design from University of San Francisco while also completed her Minor in Business Administration. Her focus is on data visualization, interior design, fashion and real estate. Currently, Siyu is preparing to launch a fashion blog that contains the most modern fashion and street snapshot.

Patrick O’Donnel

Patrick O'Donnel is a graduate of the Ohio State University and holds a BS in Psychology. His interests include mapping and modeling complex human behavior, translating data into three dimensions, and installation sculpture/architecture. Otherwise, you can find him baking, playing board games, or laughing at his own jokes.

Ryan Morrill

Before the MFA program, Ryan was the head of data visualization at Nielsen and led similar efforts at Forrester Research. He strives for logical, utilitarian design -- creating things that are equally beautiful, useful, and efficient

Jinni Luo

Xingyue Li

Xingyue studied multimedia telecommunication in China and she got an Bachelor degree of Engineering in Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. She enjoys the process of thinking and creating visual solutions for audience, which made her transfer from a programmer to a designer. She desires to explore a broader world in discovering interaction visualization for interesting subjects like social innovation, youth leadership and feminism movement, etc.

Suyuan Ji

Lucy Green

Having been a 2D Compositor for film in Los Angeles and a studio painter I now tell stories of data with veracity. Interactive Illustrations are my focus.

Maaria Assami

Irene de la Torre Arenas

Irene de la Torre-Arenas majored in Journalism and in Advertising and Public Relations. She loves to tell stories through data and design and, in the future, hopes to create visualizations that help people to understand news better and make them more involved in their society.

Armin Akhavan

Armin has a BA in Urban Planning from Tehran University, Iran, and an MS in Urban and Regional Policy from Northeastern University. Since 2013, he has been working in the Data Services Department at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston on a variety of data-related projects. These projects range from scenario modeling, land-use planning, and data mining/predictive analysis to data visualization, web development and design. He is interested in working on web-based application projects aimed at perpetuating civic good. His other interests include interactive front-end design, web-mapping, and database development for web.

Xiaxin Chen

Xiaxin hails from China, where he studied software engineering. His interests are in making MVs and posters, and he aims to expand his knowledge base in design, to create beautiful pieces in the future. In his spare time, he enjoys playing video games and tennis.

Xiangyi Fu

Xiangyi majored in digital media in her undergraduate program. She loves designing and seeks ways to make her productions more creative. Xiangyi enjoys working in a group, has deep interests in interactive design and possess basic skills in motion graphics.

Jessica Hopkins

Jess has a BFA in graphic design and believes minimal design is beautiful design. In the future, she hopes to create pieces of work that impact the environment around us. She has a strong love of typography, organization, small fonts, a simple palette, and prefers lowercase letters.

Skye Morét

Skye Morét believes in the power of visualization and meaningful engagement in bridging the gap between two traditionally polar disciplines: design and science. Her work investigates the complex relationship between humans, technology and nature. Skye creates work that encourages curiosity, empathy, and interaction, and explores these themes through data-driven design and visual storytelling. Skye believes that the synergy of seemingly disparate disciplines will create the social-environmental engagement necessary for dynamic stewardship of our planet.

Lia Petronio

Lia earned her BFA at Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts, in Visual Arts with a dual concentration in Design and Drawing. She worked heavily in digital media and sculpture, combining the two as installations- often projecting videos on industrial or kinetic structures. Her studies include political philosophy, art history and video.

Professionally she has worked primarily in video & website production and is currently working as an Information Designer at MIT Mobile Experience Lab.

Now a graduate student at Northeastern University earning an MFA in Information Design and Visualization, Lia is interested in combining elements from animation to create theater-esque data environments in order to enhance emotional responses to visualized information.

Mahima Pushkarna

Mahima is a multi-disciplinary designer with interests in exploring thematic intersections of data, technology, design and cultures. She explores the impact of community-specific “digital dialects” on information dissemination and acceptance, and uses that to design insightful, inclusive and intuitively informative interactions.

When she is not designing, she spends time working with dogs and discovering wonderful, new things about them.

Thomas Urell

Aldo Viramontes

Aldo Viramontes holds an BSc in Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso, and is completing a Masters in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University, Denmark. Although he is very interested in every aspect of information design, his greatest interest in the field is on how we understand information visualizations, and how different design features of visualizations can have an impact on this understanding.

Jin Wang

Wang Jin, or Jin for short, is from China. She majored in Advertising in her undergraduate program. While some may wonder what brings them joy in life, Jin finds joy through graphic design. She believes that graphic design is a form of information design, and that information design can change the way we live and improve our lives. Design will be her life-long interest, as she hopes to create more beauty through her designs!

Yangdong Ye

Yangdong Ye is an optimistic man who enjoys divergent thinking and Point-Line-Surface designing. He majored in Digital Arts, focusing on user experience and designing many interfaces. He wants to explore the relationship between users and on-screen information displays in order to create better information transmissions from screens to users.

Xuan Zhang

Xuan holds a BFA in Visual Communication Design and an MA in Graphic Design with a concentration in packaging design from Beijing, China. At Northeastern, she is exploring the art in combining information with appropriate visualizations.

Ashley Treni

Ashley, alumna of the first IDV cohort, is Co-Founder and Design Director of the web platform JustFix.nyc. She is a “real time” designer, interested in participatory design, information architecture, and experience design. She strives to see the insides and outsides of systems simultaneously, with patience and without agenda. She enjoys indeterminate music, wines from the Jura, making stuff with her hands, and is always up for an adventure.

JustFix.nyc works to support tenants in neglectful housing situations with technology that helps them build well-documented legal cases and connect with community advocates. Our goal is healthy and safe homes for all.

Esat Karaman

Esat obtained his graduate degree in Graphic Design from Bilkent University. He worked as freelance graphic designer for a year, and is interested in package design and expanding information design to other fields of design.

Liangchuan Sun

Vivian has a background in Motion graphics and interactive design. She believes that information visualization is a common language for many academic fields, and that a good information visualization offers a more efficient platform of learning.

Lauren McCafferty

Lauren was part of the first graduating class of the IDV program at Northeastern. She now works as a User Experience Designer for a consumer agency, C Space. She works throughout all stages of design and applies a user-centered focus to all her work. She works as a consultant as well as a product designer and finds both streams of work both interesting and challenging. But who doesn't love a good design challenge?

Outside of work, spending time outdoors, with family and friends, and exploring new places are among her top priorities.

Rania Masri

Rania M. Masri is currently Data Visualization Designer at the Center for Applied Data Science at OptumLabs, a collaborative research and innovation center co-founded by UnitedHealth and Mayo Clinic. Rania obtained her MFA in Information Design and Visualization at Northeastern University and her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Michigan–Dearborn in Computer Science, Communication, and Economics. Previously, she served as Marketing Director for a multi-location cosmetic surgery clinic and Chief Marketing Officer of a small nonprofit consulting firm.

Rania is a graphic, web, and information designer with 15 years of experience in creative design, website development, and directing marketing, social media and fundraising campaigns. Among the clients in Rania’s portfolio are civil rights and social justice advocacy organizations, family services agencies, and research and educational institutions. Her current focus is on information design and data visualization, UI/UX design, and responsive web design, with a special interest in the nonprofit and healthcare sectors.