Kayla DesPortes

Kayla DesPortes is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and the Learning Sciences at NYU Steinhardt in the Department of Administration Leadership and Technology. Prior to her appointment she gained a Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Kayla’s work transforms computing technology, learning opportunities, and the underlying exclusionary practices of computing to support self-empowerment of marginalized individuals and communities to create a more equitable society. She is a collaborative, community-centered researcher, designer, and engineer, focused on understanding how learning environments and computing technologies can be created to integrate the knowledge and assets of communities and individuals. She combines and contributes scholarship across the learning sciences and human-computer interaction fields. Her work focuses on how computing, engineering, and data literacy can intertwine with artistic practices to engage learners in personally meaningful, creative expression as they explore their cultures and identities, and the social and political dimensions of society. She works within community and educational organizations grounded in social justice, literary arts, dance, visual arts, and computing. Applying participatory research methods, Kayla develops long-term collaborations with community leaders, community members, youth learners, artists, researchers, and educators.

Kayla is currently the PI on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant titled the Creative Computing Cookbook: Grounding Artistic Computing in the Learning Sciences (Award #2241809), which examines how learning theories and equity-oriented design can be centralized in the co-design of modular learner- and instructor-facing resources for creative computing. The work is in collaboration with two community arts education organizations focused on equity—STEM From Dance and Community Word Project. Kayla is also the PI on an NSF grant titled, Critical Data Stories: Co-Designing Remixing Tools with Teachers to Support Critical Data Literacy with Middle School Youth (Award #2302658). The grant explores the co-design of an AI-supported platform that can support youth in analyzing and organizing data and media into narratives as they explore social justice issues and communicate their perspectives and understandings. Last, Kayla is the PI on the NYU side of a collaboration with MIT on an NSF grant exploring teaching fabrication literacies through games (Award #2008028). The work brings more nuance to how we conceptualize skills within makerspaces and fabrication, while exploring how technology can be positioned to facilitate learning through games.