Tinkering Tinkerer: Leah Buechley

Leah Buechley is a designer, engineer, artist, and educator whose work explores intersections and juxtapositions—of “high” and “low” technologies, new and ancient materials, and masculine and feminine making traditions. She also develops tools that help people build their own technologies. Leah's Website

Leah is a well-known expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing a method for creating cloth printed circuit boards (fabric PCBs) and designing the commercially available LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research was the recipient of the best paper award at the 2006 International Symposium on Wearable Computers and has been featured in numerous articles in the popular press including the New York Times, Boston Globe, CRAFT Magazine, Denver Post, and Taipei Times. Leah received PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College. Leah came to the Learning Studio for two weeks as part of an NEA Artist in Residence grant. While in residence, she designed and built a large-scale interactive painting, inspired by craftsman-style wallpaper.