Entertainment Technology Center

ETC alum and The Alice Project director Melanie Lam was a guest on Carnegie Mellon University's podcast, Where What If Becomes What's Next, a few weeks ago!

She talked to host Randy Scott about how Randy Pausch created Alice, the program's history, and where it's heading in the future 🚀

➡ Read some of the highlights from the interview here: https://etc.cmu.edu/about/news-events/alice-computer-science

Second year ETC student Agnes Zhang is spending her summer working as a Creative Design Intern at Deeplocal, a Pittsburgh-based creative technology and experience design company.

“At Deeplocal, I’ve been able to contribute not only to the early creative thinking, but also to figuring out how an idea actually looks, works, and gets built,” she said. “I really enjoy that combination of creativity and problem-solving, especially when a project moves between digital and physical design.”

Thanks Agnes for taking us along with you for a day ✨🤳

ETC Assistant Teaching Professor Mo Mahler is using the summer — and support from the ETC’s new Summer Research Fund — to start pre-production on a new animated short film.

Mahler, whose last film won Best in Show at 2024’s SIGGRAPH conference, is working with second-year ETC student and animator Aidan Terry on the initial storyboarding process.

The in-progress short will explore themes of death and grief while also experimenting with film techniques in animation and VFX. For Mahler, storyboarding is a low-cost way of conceptualizing the film in early stages.

“It takes it to the next level with really understanding what the story is,” he said.

New ETC Year in Reflection just dropped ⚡

Check it out: https://etc.cmu.edu/about/news-events/2025-2026-year-reflection

The research Samantha Lai (ETC ‘26) is presenting this week at SIGGRAPH started with an ETC project course 🧠⚡

Lai and her team developed an interactive film that would utilize the unique features of ETC’s interactive media space the CAVERN.

Using the CAVERN’s 180-degree curved screen and eye and motion tracking sensors, the resulting short film unfolds differently depending on what the viewer pays attention to — a radical experiment in emerging technology and storytelling.

Samantha then teamed up with ETC faculty member Vivian Shen to develop a study that uses Lai’s film and EEG to explore the relationship between attention, cognition, and narrative.

Samantha and Vivian will be showing their work at SIGGRAPH’s Immersive Pavillion through Thursday, so if you’re in LA go check it out ✨

Second-year ETC student Riya Kanani (Mandaliya🦜) is spending her summer working as a programming intern at Cortina Productions, a media design and production company specializing in interactive museum experiences. And lucky for you, she gave us a peek at a day in her life there — including emails, Nespresso, and testing new technologies 💻☕️

Thanks Riya for letting us spend a day with you via Instagram!

Did you catch ETC Assistant Teaching Professor Charles Johnson on KDKA-TV | CBS Pittsburgh’s Talk Pittsburgh last week talking about the World Cup and the future of sports?

Professor Johnson, who held design leadership roles at Adidas and Puma before coming to the ETC, talked about the research he’s doing this summer into humanoid robotics and athletic performance.