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Josie Armstrong is graduating from �鶹��Ƶ with a BS in Creative Technology & Design and a BA in Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts (Production Track). For the past two years, Josie has worked as a Learning Assistant (LA) for coding and web design courses at the ATLAS Institute. As an LA, Josie found a passion for teaching and pedagogy, and now researches LA pedagogy and program structure under Dr. Anthony Pinter. Through their research and work as an LA, Josie hopes to support future generations of students and LAs at the ATLAS Institute. 

Josie has found a home like no other in the CTD program. They value the collaborative and welcoming environment highly, and they prioritize contributing to that environment as a student and an LA. Josie’s capstone project is a digitally integrated web-based tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) that combines their experience in game design, web design, and book design. In their free time, they enjoy crocheting, reading, raising houseplants, and occasionally throwing darts. After graduating from �鶹��Ƶ, Josie will be pursuing a JD at the University of Chicago Law School, where they intend to focus on media/technology IP and data privacy law.

Lily Dykstra graduates summa cum laude from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Bachelor of Science in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) and a certificate in User Experience. As a student and in life, Lily approaches challenges with radical flexibility and an open mind, always eager to explore everywhere creative processes can lead. She has specifically focused on product and hardware design of various materials, applications and utilities. Both on Boulder’s campus and abroad during her semester in Florence, Lily’s studies have attended to the substance, construction, and history of various art and design forms. This was highlighted during her work in the second classroom iteration of “Hacking the Apocalypse,” in which she helped her group make an automated greenhouse sensitive to potential future water and food scarcity concerns. 

The combination of Lily’s unique experiences has afforded her a varied, innovative, and socially conscious perspective of the creation of material products in contemporary and historical society. During Lily’s time with CTD, she has served as an ATLAS ambassador and as a learning assistant for two core CTD courses, Image and Form. Throughout her work, she has enjoyed supporting her peers to bring their ideas to life, teaching everything from Photoshop and animation to 3D modeling and physical fabrication. To round out her CTD curriculum, her senior capstone tackles the topic of accessibility in baking. Lily and her team put together an assistive baking device that helps those with limited mobility in their hands with small baking measurements. While her future is undecided, she is eager to embrace the hugeness, beauty, and glorious uncertainty of the world. She knows she will create a vivid and meaningful life in which CTD’s teachings will continue to support and guide her creative innovations. 

Sam Jarzembowski graduates magna cum laude from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), a minor in Engineering Management, and a certificate in User Experience. During his time in CTD, Sam concentrated his studies in user experience design. He completed a UX audit for the FlyDelta app, redesigned the Denver Zoo’s ticketing experience, and created a parking guidance device in the form of an interactive stoplight. All of these projects, along with the rest of the CTD curriculum, fostered his passion for interaction design and a blend of physical and digital design. For the past two years, Sam has served as a Learning Assistant (LA) for ATLS 2200, one of CTD’s core courses that teaches web design and development. He has thoroughly enjoyed his time in the classroom guiding students through assignments, answering questions, and providing feedback on their work. Sam is immensely grateful for the opportunities that the ATLAS Institute, the CTD program, and the University of Colorado Boulder have provided him.

For his senior capstone project, Sam worked alongside two team members to create Measurely, an assistive baking device. Measurely combines an automated ingredient dispenser, scale, control panel, and web app to make baking more accessible to those with limited hand mobility or dexterity. His role included interaction design, user testing, and programming. This fall, Sam will be attending graduate school to further his education and gain more experience in his field. He will focus on human-centered design and how people interact with both physical and digital experiences.

Jordyn Rabinowitz graduates summa cum laude from �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Bachelor of Science in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), as well as minors in space and engineering management. Throughout her time at ATLAS, she has combined technical creativity with a strong commitment to teaching, mentorship, and building accessible learning experiences.

At CU, Jordyn serves as head learning assistant for Image (ATLS 2100), where she leads lab-style recitations, supports first-time coders, and helps manage a large instructional team. She also works in the Helio Lab, leading workshops in areas such as VR, AR, CAD, photography, and digital media. In addition, she contributed to STEM education through video production for NCWIT Teach Engineering, creating educational content for K–12 classrooms.

One of Jordyn’s most meaningful ATLAS projects was helping rebuild the Image course’s VR/WebXR unit, transitioning it from Glitch to GitHub. By writing student-facing onboarding guides and improving the setup process, she helped reduce technical barriers for beginners and make creative coding feel more approachable and accessible.

She is known for her thoughtful leadership, low-floor/high-ceiling teaching approach, and ability to make technical concepts engaging for a wide range of learners.

Outside the classroom, Jordyn is also a climbing coach and mentor. Her current capstone project, Surge Harness, is a wearable resistance system designed to help climbers train movement control and stability safely while climbing. Starting this summer, she will attend UC Irvine’s Master of Arts in Teaching program to prepare to become a secondary mathematics teacher, continuing her interest in the intersection of education, technology, and hands-on design.

Lindsey Trussell graduates from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a major in Creative Technology and Design and a minor in Creative Writing. She has served as a Learning Assistant for Computational Foundations 1 (ATLS 1300) and Web (ATLS 2200), supporting students in developing foundational skills in programming and web development. Lindsey also collaborated with faculty to co-design Pedagogy 2, a course that prepares ATLAS students for teaching roles as Learning Assistants, reflecting her sustained commitment to mentorship and education.

Lindsey is an active presence in the BTU Lab, where she regularly assists peers, troubleshoots complex projects, and offers thoughtful, detail-oriented feedback across disciplines. Her approach to both teaching and making is grounded in patience and persistence, allowing her to carefully work through technical challenges.

Her creative work explores the intersection of analog audio systems, physical computing, and interactive design, with a focus on manufacturing and fabrication practices. For her senior capstone, she is developing a guitar pedal that maps live audio signals to DMX lighting effects, translating sound into responsive visual environments.

Lindsey’s interdisciplinary practice integrates poetry with visual media and fabrication, combining written language with physical form. Across her work, she demonstrates a strong commitment to craftsmanship, collaboration, and the creation of expressive, carefully constructed experiences.

Joe Yoder graduates from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Technology and Design (CTD), maintaining a 3.96 GPA. He is the third member of his family to pursue a CTD degree, following his two sisters, who also graduated from the program. 

Joe’s senior capstone project, RotoClimb, is a climbing wall with holds that rotate to different angles using motors and custom controls, changing the difficulty of routes without manually resetting the wall. The project explores how rotating holds can expand training possibilities for all levels of climbers, while demonstrating hands-on prototyping and engineering design. 

Joe also contributed to EcoSort, an AI-powered waste sorting robot. EcoSort was designed to help public spaces like universities improve recycling accuracy and reduce waste contamination. The complete business pitch won 1st place out of 11 teams in Joe’s business minor capstone competition. In addition to technology focused builds, Joe enjoys woodworking, memorably building an optical illusion cutting board made from three contrasting hardwoods that was featured in the ATLAS Expo 2025. 

Outside of school, Joe has spent the past 10 months working at Mountain Sun Pub & Brewery as a line cook and server, and was recently promoted to shift lead manager. At work Joe has developed strong teamwork, communication, and leadership skills in a fast-paced environment. After graduation, Joe is seeking a full-time position to continue his radical creativity and strong work ethic.

Krithik Ranjan graduates with a PhD in Creative Technology & Design at the ATLAS Institute and �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Krithik is a designer, researcher, and educator passionate about imagining and developing innovative technologies to support people’s creative technology interactions. In his research, he develops and studies environments for creating and learning with computers that support open-ended creativity and tinkering across domains. His dissertation promotes deeper material engagement in computing technologies that leverage physical craft materials to offer expressive, explorative, and playful means for creativity that are low-cost, low-barrier, and learner-driven in diverse formal and informal educational environments. 

Krithik has designed a number of novel technologies towards this goal, such as toolkits for creating animations from drawings on paper, creative science simulations, intuitive physical computing platforms, and tangible toolkit and curriculum for AI literacy. As a graduate student in ATLAS, he has served as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for Object (ATLS 3300) and Computational Foundations II (ATLS 2270), and formally and informally mentored a number of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students on research, thesis, and course projects. Krithik was also a finalist for the 2026 Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT) at �鶹��Ƶ. Moving forward, he plans to continue to design and research technologies for enabling meaningful, maker-driven, and material-rich computational interactions for makers of all ages.

Caitlin Rai Littlejohn graduates from CU’s College of Engineering and Applied Science with a Master’s in Creative Technology and Design (CTD): Social Impact. Her work sits at the intersection of design and technology, and community-centered problem solving, with a focus on making complex systems more accessible and equitable.

During her time in the program, Caitlin has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects addressing both environmental and social challenges. As the lead designer on ClimateThreads: Patterns in Air. Stories in Data., she contributed to branding, user experience, and visualization for a multimedia platform that translates air quality data into accessible, tactile formats, highlighting environmental inequities across the Denver-Aurora region. In partnership with AdventHealth, she contributed to user experience research for NurseWell, conducting interviews, identifying key gaps in nurse retention, and developing research-informed concepts and solutions to address these challenges, with pathways toward implementation. Additionally, Caitlin partnered with Denver Public Library’s IdeaLAB to redesign internal observation processes that support more effective program evaluation and user insight. Her work is grounded in a thoughtful, user-centered approach that prioritizes accessibility, storytelling, and meaningful impact.

For her practicum, Caitlin is developing and leading ATLAS’s inaugural pre-collegiate summer program, a studio-based experience engaging high school students in creative technology, design methodologies, and collaborative problem-solving. Through this work, she continues to expand her passion for mentorship and education.

Following graduation, Caitlin plans to apply her interdisciplinary background to expand equitable access to STEAM education in underserved communities through the development of community-centered makerspaces.

I’m Klara Nitsche, a Master’s student on the Creative Technology and Design track. At ATLAS, I’ve had the pleasure of serving as an LA for two courses and a research collaborator in the ACME lab studying human-robot-interaction. I also branched out and joined the HIRO lab in the department of computer science, furthering my technical knowledge of robots and seeing where creativity can support robotics. In the graduate program I hosted tours, social events, and on-campus outreach as an ATLAS social recruiter and designed, documented, and advertised events at the B2 Blackbox Theater. 

My experiences have culminated in a couple projects I feel proud of here, most notably a communal handwritten typeface called ‘Code of Conduct’ and my MS thesis: edible robots. My work was always about studying novel interactions between humans and materials, but my time at ATLAS has given me the tools to create these interactions myself. I’m excited to continue exploring these themes and research interests after graduation as I continue studying the field of human-robot-interaction!

Harsita Rajendren (she/her) is a master’s student in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work focuses on animation and motion design, with an emphasis on storytelling and human-centered experiences.

At ATLAS, Harsita has explored how animation can be used as a tool for communication and empathy. One of her key projects includes a hyperhidrosis awareness campaign, where she created an animated piece to shed light on a condition that is often overlooked yet deeply impacts daily life. She also developed an advertising campaign centered on first-time travelers, highlighting the unspoken social expectations and challenges newcomers face when navigating unfamiliar environments. Through these projects, she aims to make complex or overlooked experiences more visible and relatable.

Her approach combines animation with insights from UI/UX and human-computer interaction, allowing her to design work that is both visually engaging and psychologically informed. As an empathetic observer, she pays close attention to subtle human behaviors and emotions, translating them into meaningful visual narratives.

In addition to her creative work, Harsita has served as a physics peer mentor at the Student Academic Success Center, where she supported more than 30 first-generation undergraduate students. Through teaching and mentorship, she developed a deeper understanding of how individuals learn differently and the importance of adaptable, student-centered approaches.

Her capstone project is a choice-based interactive game that explores the idea of self-love as an active process of growth and self-accountability. Moving forward, Harsita aims to deepen her expertise in animation while continuing to explore motion design within interactive and user-centered contexts.

Kate Rooney is a graduate student in Creative Technology and Design (CTD) at the ATLAS Institute, with a background in mechanical engineering. Her work sits at the intersection of engineering, design, and human experience, shaped by projects that span extreme environments and immersive technologies.

During her time at ATLAS, Kate designed and built an environmental system to support sustainability in Antarctic field camps and led the design and build of an interactive water education exhibit and topographical table for CIRES in Alamosa as part of the We Are Water project. She also developed a raycast-based system for the B2 Black Box, which continues to serve as a reference for immersive interaction within ATLAS.

Kate’s thesis project, Earth Contours, explores immersive terrain visualization through both a mobile app experience and a full-scale installation in the B2 Black Box. The project reimagines how people engage with landscapes, transforming geospatial data into intuitive, interactive, and visually compelling experiences that foster curiosity and connection to the natural world.

Kate’s approach blends technical rigor with creativity, using design to make complex systems tangible and human-centered. She has taken on leadership roles in student projects, mentoring teams and guiding interdisciplinary collaboration, while also engaging with CU’s startup community. She has especially valued the ATLAS community and maker spaces, where collaboration and experimentation bring ideas to life.

She is excited to build a career that spans engineering, design, and immersive experience across various environments and industries to create meaningful, impactful work.

Elizabeth Saunders earned her master’s degree in Creative Technology and Design (Social Impact Track) from the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute, graduating with a 4.0 GPA.

At ATLAS, she served as the sole learning assistant for Aesthetics of Design, a 120-person hybrid course bridging the ATLAS Institute and the Mechanical Engineering Department. She also contributed as a student researcher with CU’s Sustainability Research Initiative under Dr. Jane Zelikova, launching Sustainability on Tap—a monthly speaker series bringing sustainability research into local breweries and fostering accessible, community-driven conversations that inspire action.

No course influenced Elizabeth’s thinking more than Zack Weaver’s Hacking the Apocalypse series, which shaped the guiding instinct behind her work: not just how to create something, but for whom—and what happens when it fails. Elizabeth applies this mindset through a blend of human-centered design and systems thinking, developing solutions that are equitable, resilient, and grounded in tangible, real-world impact.

This approach is evident in her practicum project: a LiDAR-based iOS foot scanning app developed with SCARPA. The app guides users through a 3D capture process to generate personalized ski boot recommendations, enhancing fit, safety, and accessibility while minimizing return-related emissions. Elizabeth also served as project manager for Give5 Mile High, a citywide volunteer platform in Denver, from conception to launch.

When she wasn't in the grad lab or the BTU, Elizabeth was outside—volunteering for Eldora ski patrol, coaching adaptive rowing, cycling, and alpine skiing, and logging over 200 ski days.

She came to ATLAS with a head full of ideas, a love for the outdoors, and a conviction that technology could do more good in the world. She leaves with the skills, the people, and the proof that it can—and the passion to continue building a more equitable and sustainable future.

Creative Technology & Design taught me the importance of community and diverse perspectives gained through meaningful connections. A fellow graduate mentored me in my early years, showing me firsthand the creative freedom and remarkable people this program cultivates. 

What I'd want prospective students to know about ATLAS is that it's a place where the mix of tech, art, and design opens doors to ideas you never knew you had, all while fostering a community of people who genuinely inspire one another.

The biggest lesson I took away from my time as a CTD student is to try everything and put in 100%! The process is the point, and I've grown so much by trying, stumbling, and trying again. I think that's something that is uniquely possible and encouraged in CTD.

To future students, you will have so many opportunities to find and build community in your time at CU. Try as many of them as you can—you just might find something life-changing among those opportunities.