This group of researchers came together in 2019 to form the lab out of shared interest in conducting research around the impersonality of a merely technical approach to social transformation and to begin designing ways to connect the tools to what they really stand for: knowledge, behaviours, people.
Borna Noureddin is a faculty member in the School of Computing and Academic Studies at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. from the University of British Columbia in 2010 and 2003, respectively, in electrical engineering, and his B.Eng. in computer engineering from the University of Victoria in 1994. Borna has worked as a software developer, manager, consultant, entrepreneur and educator in North America, Europe and Southern Africa for over 25 years. He has also organized international conferences and currently serves on non-profit boards overseeing various educational and community service efforts locally and internationally.
Borna teaches programming courses in the Bachelor of Science in Applied Computer Science (BScACS) program, primarily to students specializing in the Games Development Option. He also currently acts as the Major Projects Coordinator for the program.
For the past eleven years, Leila has been working in community-based educational programs with youth aged 12-18 in North and South America. Most of her experience has been in Western Canada, with the Junior Youth Empowerment Program. This program helps to support youth to develop literacy and language capabilities through a series of textbooks that they then represent in multiple modes including linguistic, audial, and visual. The young people have opportunities to express their ideas for change and act on those ideas through service projects in their local community. Many of the youth involved have been newcomers to Canada, with several of them being forced to come due to instability in their home countries.
Leila also taught settlement and workplace English to adults in the Language Instruction for Newcomers program for the past three years. Finally, Leila has been facilitating English Corners through Colibri Learning Foundation that aims to assist youth and adults to build conversational language skills through friendships. These experiences led to her current interest in language and literacy education, refugee-background youth, and technology. She is currently studying at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Education and will be completing my Master of Arts in Literacy Education.
Taban is a student in the Social Dimensions of Health PhD program at the University of Victoria. Her dissertation looks at the impact of digital tools on the consciousness of Indigenous youth living on Snuneymuxw Territory on Vancouver Island.
Taban holds an MSc in Community Health Sciences, with a focus on Health Research, from the University of Calgary. Taban also holds a BA in Development Studies, with a focus on Indigenous Peoples of Canada, from the University of Calgary. Taban’s passion for dealing with health inequities through effective research and knowledge transfer methods has been forged through her travel and work in 26 countries, including living among Indigenous children and youth in Canada.