Cumulus has the pleasure to welcome two new recipients of the Cumulus Plus Grant to the Cumulus Guayaquil 2021: Arts Imagining Communities to Come conference.
Learn more about Natacha and Jose below.
Natacha Poggio
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
University of Houston Downtown (uhd.edu), USA
[email protected]
Natacha Poggio is a social impact educator, TEDx speaker, and advocate of design for social change. In her teaching at the University of Houston-Downtown, she concentrates on the role nature plays in our lives and encourages students to find solutions that will inspire positive change in society. She is the founding director of Design Global Change (2008), a creative collaborative designing planet-centered solutions to address global health, environmental, and social justice problems. She has over two decades of professional practice, and her work has reached hundreds of communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, garnering recognition as a two-time recipient of the Sappi “Ideas that Matter” award. Since 2011, she has been on the Winterhouse Institute Advisory Council (working on the teaching and practice of social innovation in higher education). When not teaching, Natacha is judging competitions; contributing to books and publications on social design, global health, and sustainability; and volunteering for AIGA –the professional association of design. Natacha earned a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an M.F.A. in Experience Design from The University of Texas at Austin, United States. She is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina but considers herself a citizen of the world.
José Ignacio López Ramírez Gastón
Director of Innovation and Technology Transfer
Universidad Nacional de Musica, Lima – Peru
https://www.unm.edu.pe/
https://www.unm.edu.pe/ditec/
[email protected]
José Ignacio López Ramírez Gastón holds a PhD in Computer Music from the University of
California San Diego (UCSD) where he studied under the supervision of Miller Puckette. He is
currently a lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Música (ex Conservatorio Nacional de
Música), where he is in charge of the music and technology courses, coordinates the Laboratorio
de Música Electroacústica y Arte Sonoro and is Director de Innovación y Transferencia
Tecnológica. He also lectures on Sound Arts and Popular Music at the Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Perú. In 2019 he published the book La Guardia Nueva. Visiones Sobre la Música
Electrónica en el Perú.
Overview of the program
The Cumulus Plus Grant Program is a unique opportunity for researchers, academic and administrative staff to receive a scholarship to attend a Cumulus Conference and benefit from the knowledge exchange and community-building that results from meeting the diversity of our Cumulus members. The program is intended to assist colleagues in a country and/or region of the world typically underrepresented within the Cumulus network, opening the door for mutual learning and future collaboration.
