Hey, I'm Bridger! I'm a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at Carleton College. I earned my Ph.D. in the Interactive Visualization Lab at the University of Minnesota with Professor Daniel F. Keefe. I use he/they pronouns.
My work bridges the gap between physical and digital spaces using a combination of extended reality and digital fabrication technologies. Specifically, I build creative extended reality visualization solutions to make multivariate spatial or spatiotemporal data more graspable: both more comprehensible and more tactile.
Besides my research, I have a passion for teaching. In my graduate career, I was been an instructor and co-instructor for multiple classes, and have been a teaching assistant most other semesters. Now more than ever, it's important for individuals to be informed about the inner computational workings of the technologies our society depends on.
This is the blurb that I copy/paste into forms requesting a bio in the third-person:
Bridger Herman (he/they) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Computer Science department
at
Carleton College.
He earned his Ph.D. in the University
of Minnesota's
Interactive Visualization Lab,
working with
Daniel F. Keefe.
Bridger is an enthusiastic computer science educator with a keen interest in
helping people navigate their first computer science experiences to become
thoughtful and critical contributors to a rapidly evolving field with worldwide
impacts. Their research evolves at the intersection of
extended reality visualization,
data physicalization
, and
creativity support tools
, to facilitate more useful, deliberately designed interactions between humans,
computers, and data. Beyond academics, Bridger can generally be found outside
running, cycling, hiking, skiing, or rock climbing, and they enjoy attending
jazz concerts and playing percussion for local music ensembles in their free
time.
Check out some of my work below!
