Notes for your letter

What your letter covers that the others cannot

Hyo Kang has known me just as long and is writing about the research. Nigel Newbutt is writing about the learning-sciences side and the work with autistic adults. You saw the same years from the institute's side: what I contributed to the department, from inside it and from outside it, over time. That part is yours.

• The trajectory

  Student, then instructor, then someone the institute brought back with a larger load. A committee reads a director rehiring someone, and giving him more, as a judgment in itself.

• Teaching

  Several programs ask writers directly about teaching potential. You have seen mine in both a graduate studio and undergraduate courses, and you have seen what I add beyond the syllabus.

• What I give back

  My statement says I want a PhD so that I can eventually run a lab where this work is taught and handed on. You can say whether I already behave that way: the internships, the letters for students, the lectures, the projects brought back to UF.

The record, as you saw it

• 2019 – 2022 MA in Digital Arts and Sciences at the Digital Worlds Institute. You taught me during the degree.
• 2020 – 2021 Six hackathon wins while a student: HackaTown at Polytechnique Montréal, HackGT (IBM Challenge), VandyHacks (Google Cloud and Hardware), KnightHacks, ShellHacks, and HackViolet (Estée Lauder).
• 2021 – 2022 Research published at ACM VRST while still a master's student: HoloKeys (2021, first author) and Covid Reflections (2022). We travelled to Tsukuba, Japan, for VRST 2022 to present and represent the department. Invited by Unity to speak with them on stage at Augmented World Expo in Silicon Valley, 2022 (“Faster Iteration in AR Using Unity”). Director's Award, UF Digital Worlds, 2022.
• 2023 Founded Augmented Info Systems, my research and development studio. You mentored me through starting it, around the time you became director. You offered me my first teaching position that fall: DIG 6050C Entertainment Technology, a graduate VR studio of ten students. Their collaborative XR installations were exhibited with the Florida Museum of Natural History.
• 2023 – 2026 Invited lectures in the graduate program after the studio course. My studio worked with UF on several projects, including the microelectronics training with the Florida Semiconductor Institute and the PATHS program for autistic STEM students. Three students from the institute interned at my studio, their first roles in industry. I later wrote letters supporting their graduate applications.
• Fall 2026 You offered a larger teaching load: three undergraduate courses (DIG 3713 Game Content Production, DIG 3873 Game Systems Development 1, DIG 4540C Production of Immersive Environments). Alongside them I run two weekly series for the students: critical playthroughs of landmark games, and a film series with study guides on how constructed worlds are built. I also rebuilt the autograder for DIG 3873.

Where your judgment counts most

• A comparison. You have taught in the institute and now direct it. Where I stand among the master's students and instructors you have seen is something no one else can say. Stanford's form asks for exactly this, as a rating against a group you name.
• Why a PhD now. You watched me choose industry after the master's and then mentored me through starting the studio. If you have a view on why doctoral study is the right step at this point, a committee will want it.
• One or two moments you remember without being reminded. A specific scene from a class, a critique or the museum opening does more than a list of achievements.