Stuckeman School names inaugural Immersive Environments Lab Fellow
Source: Penn State News
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Stuckeman School in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State has announced Megan Young, senior lecturer of digital art and digital art area head at the Indiana University Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design, as the inaugural Immersive Environments Lab (IEL) Fellow.
The fellowship recipient receives up to $20,000 to use the IEL as a space for an immersive workshop and/or installation and give a public presentation of their work.
Young’s proposal, titled “Line Notes – What Machines See, What We Remember,” explores why the everyday items we keep matter so much to us — and why technology still struggles to understand that emotional connection.
While contemporary digital technologies can easily recognize the shape or surface of an object, it cannot capture the personal memories and lived experiences that give it meaning. Using 3D scanning and virtual reality, “Line Notes” bridges this gap by inviting people to contribute meaningful personal items along with their stories, notes and reflections. Together, these pieces form a growing digital archive that reveals how objects connect us through shared memories, history and even loss.
Stuckeman School students are invited to help shape this project through workshops, object collection and exhibitions. As the first group of contributors, students will bring in personal items and learn how digital tools and storytelling build an interactive archive.
Through sketching, using 3D scanners, and collaborating in virtual reality (via the Hyve-3D system in the IEL), participants will create and annotate digital models of their items. This project highlights underrepresented personal histories and creates a framework to welcome stories from the wider community.
Stuckeman School jurors for the 2026-2027 IEL Fellowship were Yasmine Abbas, associate teaching professor of architecture and IEL director; Tomás Dorta, affiliate professor of architecture; Orsolya Gáspár, assistant professor of architecture; and David Goldberg, associate clinical professor of landscape architecture.
According to the jury, Young’s proposal “...offers a unique perspective on memory that artfully employs immersive technologies and presents compelling activities that engage the three departments at the Stuckeman School.”
Young is an artist whose work highlights the human side of technology. She looks closely at the unwritten rules and digital systems that shape our daily lives, striving to make both our digital and physical worlds more empathetic and inclusive. Young brings her ideas to life through experimental digital archives, performance art and interactive experiences.
Her projects have earned critical acclaim, having been featured by The New York Times, The Atlantic, Hyperallergic and NPR.
At Indiana University, she serves as faculty champion for IU’s student-driven Extended Reality Team with the Center of Excellence for Women and Technology. Her teaching introduces students to creative coding, physical computing and immersive environments while questioning how our use of emerging technologies has the potential to reshape relationships between society, culture and technology.
“The Stuckeman School drives positive impacts by design through transdisciplinary collaboration and the integration of diverse perspectives to reimagine alternative and innovative solutions,” said Chingwen Cheng, Stuckeman School director. “The IEL at the Stuckeman School is equipped with a social VR system for collaborative teaching, research and creative practice. We are excited to welcome our inaugural Stuckeman IEL Fellow to demonstrate how we can use the IEL as a learning lab for fostering collaboration and innovation in design education and research at the Stuckeman School and beyond.”
The mission of the Stuckeman School’s IEL is to expand the understanding of immersion — cultural, spatial, material and virtual — and to explore immersive hybrid — physical and digital — design workflows that enable embodied experiences of the built environment.
