Thursday, May 14, 2026 | 5:00–7:00 PM
233 Sieg Building | Design Lab | UW Seattle
Join us for the annual Science, Technology, and Society Studies (STSS) Graduate Presentations and Reception, the first in-person event in a long while, celebrating the work of this year’s graduating certificate students: Dan Tibbles, Cameron Musard, Rin Huang, Rachael Diamond, and Erica Bigelow.
The STSS Graduate Certificate Program at the UW introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society through coursework, mentorship, and independent research. Through their studies, they develop specialized portfolios that reflect their intellectual interests and contributions. This capstone experience is an opportunity to hear from students about their research, to engage with our STSS faculty and affiliates community, and to celebrate the culmination of their work and our year together. A reception will follow the presentations.
Directions and parking: https://www.hcde.washington.edu/directions
Student Presenters
Dan Tibbles
Bioethics and Humanities
Advisor: Sara Goering (Philosophy)
Presentation: Zooming Out
Dan Tibbles is a graduate student in Bioethics & Humanities, Genetic Epidemiology, and Education, Equity, & Society at the University of Washington. His work sits at the intersection of bioethics, public health genetics, and science and technology studies, focusing on how institutional incentives, interpretive practices, and data infrastructures shape what biotechnologies become clinically available, how they are communicated, and whom they serve. Prior to academia, he spent two decades in the tabletop game industry as a designer, manager, and business owner, a background that informs his systems-oriented approach to ethics, infrastructure, and human choice.
Rachael Diamond
Communication
Advisor: Carole Lee (Philosophy)
Presentation: Science/Society Communication in a Warming World
Rachael Diamond is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Communication whose master’s thesis research examines climate science communication and the rhetoric of environmental activists. After earning her MA, she will start her PhD in philosophy at Northwestern University in the fall. Before coming to UW, she was a political organizer advocating for pro-climate policies and candidates, and studied philosophy at Scripps College.
Erica Bigelow
Philosophy
Advisor: Amanda Friz (Communication)
Presentation: Meeting and Making the Tech-Built World
Erica Bigelow is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy whose dissertation studies the nature and extent of our moral obligations toward others’ emotions. She is a scholar of critical disability studies and is particularly interested in how online discourse shapes and interprets such obligations, and in rethinking feminist moral theories to meet the present moment.
Cameron Musard
Urban Design and Planning
Advisor: Daniela Rosner (Human Centered Design & Engineering)
Presentation: New-Wave Old-School Urban Planning (Retro-Planning): A Master Builder Imaginary
Cameron Musard is a second-year Master of Urban Planning student within the College of Built Environments, whose STSS portfolio explores the role of craft and making in the production and authorization of knowledge within built environment schools. He is a scholar of pragmatist/linguistic philosophy. His research interests include classical sociological topics such as analytical comparison between “traditional” and “modern” societies; and in philosophy of science, analytical comparison between naturalism and positivist epistemic venues.
Rin Huang
Cinema and Media Studies
Advisor: David Ribes (Human Centered Design & Engineering)
Presentation: Media, Modernization, Mobility
Rin Huang is a graduate student in Cinema and Media Studies, focusing on transportation and its media representations. They wonder how technologies, especially those related with aviation and aeromobility, create a dispersed imagination of globalization and modernization since 1920s.
Advisors
Sara Goering
Philosophy (UW Seattle)
Sara Goering is Professor of Philosophy and the Program on Ethics, and has affiliations with the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, and the Disability Studies Program. In addition, she currently leads the ethics thrust at the UW Center for Neurotechnology. She teaches courses in bioethics, ethics, philosophy of disability, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of medicine. She also spends time discussing philosophy with children in the Seattle public schools, through her role as the Program Director for the UW Center for Philosophy of Children.
Carole J. Lee
Philosophy (UW Seattle)
Carole J. Lee is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington, an Adjunct Professor at the Information School (iSchool), and Affiliate Faculty at the Center for an Informed Public, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, eScience Institute, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and the Society + Technology Program. She studies the social structure of science from both normative and descriptive perspectives.
Amanda Friz
Communication (UW Seattle)
Dr. Friz is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine in the Department of Communication and an Associate Director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity and its Heal Equity Action Lab. She is currently writing her first book, A New Materialist Critique for a Radical Politics of Pleasure, which proposes shifting the locus of feminist pleasure activism from liberal subjectivity toward a radically inclusive plurality as the basis for more equitable sexual relationships.
Daniela Rosner
Human Centered Design & Engineering, DXARTS (UW Seattle)
Daniela Rosner is Professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXArts) and Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington, where she serves as Associate Chair of External Affairs. She holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) and the Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). She also serves as an associate member of the Einstein Center for Digital Futures in Berlin, Germany.
David Ribes
Human Centered Design & Engineering (UW Seattle)
David Ribes is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Dr. Ribes’s research focuses on the sociotechnical facets of eScience and how research infrastructures can support scientific investigations across changes in technology, policy and social organization.
