All Osher Fellows

Edith Ackermann was a professor of developmental psychology, who worked at the MIT School of Architecture, the MIT Media Lab (Future of Learning Group), LEGO Learning Institute/Vision Lab/ Educational Division, INVIVIA, and other organizations and research institutions involved in the intersections between play, learning, design, creative thinking, and technologies. Before moving to the United States, Ackermann was a Scientific Collaborator at the Centre International d’Epistémologie Génétique (C.I.E.G.), under the direction of Jean Piaget. Prior to her appointment as Osher Fellow, Edith was an advisor to the Exploratorium’s PIE (Play, Invent, Explore) group. Her work at the Exploratorium focused on formulating and assessing public activities for the museum floor. Edith met with staff to discuss plans for the proposed piers site, and to discuss the scope of Exploratorium educational outreach. She worked alongside PIE and visiting artist-in-residence Chris Bell on the creation and installation of several of his “Light Play” experiments, and gave a presentation about design principles of interactive learning that she has been developing at MIT.

Jont is a senior researcher in acoustics, cochlear modeling, and digital signal processing at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. He worked primarily with exhibit development staff on new exhibit ideas in music and hearing, and ways to upgrade and improve existing sound exhibits.

Dr. Nicole Ardoin has a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Education and the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Ardoin´s research focuses on environmental behavior as influenced by environmental learning and motivated by place-based connections. In particular, she is interested in considerations of geographic scale, which is an understudied yet crucial aspect of people-place relationships in a rapidly globalizing, urbanizing world. Dr. Ardoin currently studies the use of education, communications, and other social strategies in informal and community-based settings, including nature-based tourism programs, to engage individuals and communities in dialogue, environmental decision-making, and informed conservation behavior.

Ardoin also researches the effectiveness of a range of environmental education and social science efforts in achieving measurable and meaningful conservation results. She conducts research and evaluations with informal organizations including museums, zoos/aquariums, parks, and residential environmental education programs, with an emphasis on using innovative, nontraditional metrics.

Jeanne is a professor of music at MIT, and is widely recognized for her use of innovative techniques for teaching music, which interconnect with her research on the cognitive processes of learning. She helped us develop navigation and music exhibit ideas, as well as a possible teaching research collaboration project with MIT.

Mahzarin is a professor of Social Psychology at Harvard University and an adviser on our Science of Sharing project. Her work has relevance to many spheres of activity at the Exploratorium (visitor research, teacher training, programs, and more). She  studies human thinking and feeling as it unfolds in social contexts. Her focus is primarily on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode. In particular, she is interested in the unconscious nature of assessments of self and other humans that reflect feelings and knowledge (often unintended) about their social group membership (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender, class) that underlie the us/them distinction. From such study of attitudes and beliefs of adults and children, she questions the social consequences of unconscious thought and feeling.

Mahzarin's work on unintended “unconscious” associations that can lead to preferential or discriminatory perceptions has had widespread impact beyond academia; some of her work has been used to raise individual awareness of the potential for unconscious bias. She recently published Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People. She has also written for the Harvard Business Review on business ethics and management issues.

Phil Bell is a professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on how and why people learn about science and technology and how it relates to what they want or need to accomplish in their lives.  He also investigates everyday learning, cognition, and expertise in science; children's argumentation; the use of digital technologies within youth culture; the design and use of novel learning technologies; and new approaches to inquiry instruction in science. He directs the ethnographic and design-based research of the Everyday Science and Technology Group, which is part of the larger NSF-funded Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center (aka LIFE). His past work includes building web-based learning platforms and the design and review of K–12 science curricula. Currently, he is conducting learning ethnographies of youth and families across social settings. His academic studies were in human cognition and development, science education, electrical engineering, and computer science.

Sculptor, artist, maker Julien Berthier “always did a lot of drawing as a kid," and he's turned that interest in drawing into a full-time career. His re-imagined drawings of urban surroundings, simple tools, and daily routines are a core influence on his work.

Some of these improbable scenarios, re-engineered devices, and explanatory diagrams may appear to be only ironic commentaries, fantasies, or impossible jokes. However unlikely the drawings, they served as initial sketches for intricate construction and engineering projects that have later come to fruition—among others, a boat that always seems to be sinking, a time-tracking meter that adds up working hours over a person’s lifetime, and an electric car powered by a long extension cord. In addition to these fully operational kinetic pieces, Berthier has also composed oil paintings, works in video, and site-specific installations.

 

Remo Besio worked in the machine tool industry prior to joining the Swiss Science Center Technorama as a business administrator. In 1990, inspired by visits to the Ontario Science Centre and the Exploratorium, he proposed a radical new approach for Technorama: to transform it from classic, objects-based exhibitions into a lively, hands-on, modern science center learning environment.

His plan was accepted and he was appointed executive director to accomplish this transformation. Technorama built a world-class collection of kinetic, phenomena-based contemporary art pieces along with innovative, interactive science exhibits. His work was recognized with the Kulturpreis der Stadt Winterthur (Cultural Award of the City of Winterthur) in 2001. After eighteen years as executive director of Technorama, Besio retired in 2008. He now works as a consultant for new and emerging science centers throughout Europe.

In addition to his achievements at Technorama, Besio held a diploma in marketing and was an accomplished pianist who performed with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

Retired as director of education at Kings College in London, Paul is an internationally respected leader on assessment and teacher education. He is involved with a number of curriculum and education testing and assessment programs in the US and Europe, including the US National Standards Program to revamp the way assessment is carried out in the schools. He greatly helped us to think through and develop a plan for creating a degree-granting science teacher learning center based in the Exploratorium.

Dr. Bobroff is a University of Paris physicist and founded an initiative to develop outreach materials under the project title "Physics Reimagined," which experiments with new ways to present current physics research for museums, schools, and science outreach organizations. He conducts research in the NMR group of Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS and Université Paris Sud). 

In 2011–2012, Bobroff's team carried out extensive outreach programming as part of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity, producing several webpages on superconductivity and ultra-low-temperature physics. These science outreach materials are available in French and English and include videos, high-school lesson plans, and hands-on physics activities. 

Michael Bradke is a musician, music ethnographer, educator, and musical exhibit and instrument designer. He leads workshops, educator trainings, and performs in festivals sharing traditional music and rhythm making with voice and body such as "clapping culture" and "mouth music," which often result in impromptu group performances. He has also organized instrument-making workshops at festivals, schools, art academies, and science centers. Bradke received the 2000 German Culture for Children Award, was part of the 2011 Abu Dhabi Science Festival, and designed many exhibits for Swiss science center Technorama’s special 2014 Soundscapes exhibition.

Ken Brecher is a theoretical astrophysicist and Director of Science and Mathematics Education at Boston University. His relationship to the Exploratorium dates back to 1976 when he asked Frank Oppenheimer to contribute an article to the MIT magazine on the occasion of (former Osher Fellow) Phil Morrison’s 60th birthday. Ken has been active in the world of informal science education, and served as Project Scientist for MicroObservatory project, which developed a network of telescopes controllable via the Web for use by students and teachers. At the Exploratorium, he contributed numerous ideas for new exhibits and, with the help of the Teacher Institute, built a walk-in exhibit that explores the ultraviolet spectrum. Ken also taught classes in the summer Teacher Institute program, participated in Iron Science Teacher, and worked with exhibit developers, Web site developers, the Cinema Arts staff, and others.