Hello and welcome. I'm Emily or I'm the assistant curator of modern and contemporary American design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. And we're so happy you could join us today for this panel, mind the gap women designing for transit. Our discussion today will chase the increasing impact of women in the design of the transit experience in the early 20th century in London and New York. Our panel includes those professions who have intersected with this relevant topic in meaningful ways. And we are happy to invite them to share their creative perspectives with us today. We are thrilled to welcome New York based artist, Catherine Bradford, Ye Ling Chen, deputy director for MTA Arts and Design and Zorian Clayton, assistant curator of prints at the Victorian Albert Museum. A few housekeeping items before we begin. We welcome you to take part in the discussion following our presentations today by submitting your questions in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Closed captioning is also available during this talk. So to turn on the subtitles, simply navigate to the bottom of your Zoom screen and select the icon that says CC. This program is in coordination with our current exhibition up at the Museum, Underground Modernist E. McKnight Cowher that I co-curated along with Caitlin Condell, associate curator and head of the drawings, prints and graphic design department at Cooper Hewitt. This exhibition is on view through April 10, 2022 so if you are in New York, we hope you will be able to visit the museum to see the show. The exhibition celebrates the career of the remarkable designer, E. McKnight Cowher, who is a pioneer of commercial art, a profession known today as graphic design. This slide shows a view of the opening gallery of the exhibition and the perspective highlights the beautiful exhibition designed by Lucy and Roberts Plus and universal design, both London-based designers who were in charge of the exhibition's show, design and graphic production. The cutout opening mimics the circular tunnels of London's tube as Cowher was the leading artist for the London Underground between the two World Wars. And the four works that you see on either side of this entrance cutout are the first four posters that he designed for the London Underground in 1915. And each poster shows how Cowher experimented stylistically during this period with such a great range of color, form, pattern and line. The exhibition also tells the story of the groundbreaking textile designer, Marion Dorn, Cowher's partner in life and work, who would later become his wife. But the London Underground was also a client for Dorn and she designed upholstery fabrics like chashom that you see at the left, the right here, sorry, excuse me, in 1937. And some of her patterns remain so popular and had such contemporary eye appeal that they were used in train cars for decades following the original commission. Her remarkable career is the inspiration for our panel today. Dorn had worked in San Francisco and Paris and New York before landing in London and establishing her career as an independent designer there. She was a savvy businesswoman and her knowledge of manufacturing techniques allowed her to shift between doing printed fabrics to woven upholstery. And she had a keen understanding of material and technique. Vibrant woven textiles like Avis seen at the right were part of what made her reputation in the 1930s in London. And in 1934, she even established her own business, Marion Dorn Limited. At the left, we can see how she was responsible for the own graphics for the publicity of her business. Her studio handled everything from interior design to production to distribution and the actual publicity for the works. She remains best known as the architect of floors as she was dubbed. She created a series of remarkable rug designs that filled hotel lobbies, private apartments, country homes and ocean liners. In 1936, the London Underground underwent a complete redesign from the station architecture to the publicity used to the upholstery fabrics and the interior design of the train cars. And they particularly identified these new upholstery fabrics called maquettes as crucial to the new design experience of the underground at that time. And Marion Dorn was one of several designers commissioned to carry forth this mission to bring modernism to the masses in this way. The designers received a brief that was very specific for this upholstery design. The textiles were meant to be durable and high dirt, but also bring a cheerful atmosphere to the train cars. And as a result, the color palette of a number of Dorn's designs actually includes a good bit of brown and mimics the color of dirt itself. But Dorn's textiles at this time, as I mentioned, were seen in important modern interiors across England. And with this commission, the London Underground really became yet another design space where the public could appreciate and experience her modern designs in their everyday routine. This example being the everyday routine of commuting. One of Dorn's most popular patterns was a stylized leaf design known as Collendale, which is seen here at the right in a sample in the collection of the London Transport Museum and at the left actually installed in a trailer train trailer car in the 1930s. And this was produced in a variety of colors and interestingly enough, first in a light green and later in a dark green to better hide the dirt and be a more durable color palette for this kind of rough everyday use of the commuting public. The pattern here shows both the influences of nature and classicism that Dorn would return to throughout her career. And many of her patterns were used on train lines for decades. And here we see her Shasham pattern being fitted to an upholstery covering a seeding element with upholstery well into the 1950s, which is a really good testament to her forward thinking design and her approach to the broad use of modern design. It's also worth mentioning the work of Enid Marks, who was yet another woman, a part of the original commission that the London Underground put out in the 1930s for new maquette designs. And these textiles were crucial to the particular design identity of each line. And here we can see her bell sized design of 1936, which was used on the metropolitan and district lines. Marks ran her own textile design studio where she used mostly natural dyes and hand blocked her designs to produce the final result. But when she received the commission in the 1930s to do these upholstery designs for London Transport, she made the switch to machine production. And here in a manufacturer wove the final design that she had drawn by hand. She wrote that the project was great fun because there was a very strict brief. The seating needed to look fresh at all times, even after brick layers had sat on it. So there was a camouflage problem. The design therefore had to be bold, but because it was for a moving vehicle should not be dazzling to passengers. So at this time there was the use of artificial lights in these train cars and sometimes it would reverberate in strange and unsettling ways for passengers. So designers had to be mindful of the visual density and busyness of the patterns that they were making so as to not make the motion of the train car problematic for the commuters on it. And in looking at Cooper Hewitt's collection, I just wanted to provide one final example of design for transit upholstery to kind of close this close this story circle in a way. Cooper Hewitt's collection carries this narrative up to the present and the tradition and importance of commissioning these mock-up fabrics continues today. London Transport has continuously done these commissions since the 1930s when Dorn was a part of the original group. And in 2010, designers Harriet Wallace Jones and Emma Sewell of Wallace and Sewell won a competition to design a new mock-up for the London Underground. And the brief will sound familiar. Transport for London's call for the project was very specific in terms of durability and design. They asked for patterns to have small repeats, bold and be bold in their elements, but at the same time use no more than four colors and do whatever they could in the way of their line and form to mitigate the effects of wear and vandalism. And Wallace and Sewell's design perfectly met this brief. The resulting design barman seen here is based on four London landmarks, the London Eye, big Ben's clock face, the towers of London Bridge, and the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, each simplified down to an outline of simple geometric forms. And the pattern was in fact named barman after Christian barman, who was in charge of the first commission for Maquettes for the Tube in 1936. And one of the first people to think about the importance of seat upholstery as a part of this cohesive brand identity. So now that my story has come full circle, I am looking forward to passing things along to the rest of our panelists. I'd like to invite next to join the discussion Catherine Bradford, New York based artist whose paintings contain symbolic imagery such as swimmers and superheroes. She was recently commissioned to do five ceramic murals by the MTA Arts and Design, which are installed at the First Avenue subway stop on the L line in New York City. So Catherine over to you. Thank you for that introduction Emily. I am indeed a new member of Women Designing for Transit, because the project my commission just opened this fall in New York City. We had a launch in September. Can I have the first slide? This shows a mural that I did based on one of my paintings of a person standing in a garden. And I love that the original tile work of the subway is showing on top and looks quite good with it, I thought. This greets anyone who goes down into the First Avenue subway for the L line, which goes straight to the Bedford Avenue stop in Brooklyn. I jumped at the opportunity to do as a design for it, although I'd never done public art, because I take this subway every day back and forth from my painting studio to Manhattan. Next slide. This is a close up showing the tile work. This was glass mosaics all fabricated at Mayor of Munich in Germany. I was worried that my painting wouldn't translate well, but in fact, I think they did a fabulous job not really imitating my brushstrokes but playing paying close attention to the light and color. Next slide. In fact, I was encouraged to make the sky a little darker to go with that the blue that we see often in the subway with the numbers kind of the subway blue, which I think was a good suggestion. This shows a person who could be male or female. So I left off the hair. I thought that would be, well, a little bit of mystery, maybe a little provocative. Next slide. I did five murals, and I was told right from the beginning that three of them would be in stairwells where people going up and down would have to look up to see the image. And immediately what popped into my head was my Superman flying in the air. So I kind of redesigned one of my paintings to fit this space and asked for next slide for a very kind of plain background as if it were air. Now, a lot of the designs in the New York subway relate to the neighborhood that they're in. And I didn't have the vocabulary as an artist to do that. I use my own vocabulary, which already was superheroes and figures. Next slide.  It was very exciting.  And I did it with Marcel Zama, who did four huge amazing murals for the Bedford Avenue station. I'll show you a picture of that in a second. This is another flying superhero.  Next slide. This is just a close up of a superhero figure in tile. Next slide. And the other superhero figure. I didn't call them supermen, so we wouldn't get in trouble with patent. Next slide. This is a long mural also at First Avenue, which shows a group of people gathered celebrating. I don't mean to make any connection with real people. Although I think the group that takes the subway again and again is full of pretty wild, interesting creatives that go back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Next slide. This is a closer view This also was taken from one of my paintings, not a big painting. I had to kind of Photoshop it so that it would fit in this space. Next slide. There's the painting that this came from. I'm in my studio and I'm pulling the original painting out of the racks. And then on the other half of this image, you can see the interpretation that the glass mosaics made of what I did. Next slide. I love this picture. You can see the artwork peeking up, beckoning you to come up the stairs. Next slide. This is a picture of Mayor of Munich workshop making the superhero murals. They were enormous, really. And the young women who worked on them were all from Italy. All the tiles were made in Italy of that famous Italian glass. Next slide. I went over there with my spouse and we had a fascinating time watching them work and learning a lot about how my that was my design and they had to translate it into into these. They didn't call some of them tiles, they called some of them cakes of ceramic. Next slide. And you see in the top of this that there's a mirror. So these young women who were fabricating these had to keep looking up to see the entire image. It was impossible to see at ground level. Yet they wanted to get a distant view of it, which is the exact view that the travelers in the subway would get. So I was pretty pleased and tickled that this was turning out this way. Next slide. These are the little chunks of glass, beautiful colors. And I think the blue in the middle of that row on the bottom is what I chose to be the ground for that first slide I showed. Next slide. This was on the day of the launch. I was given a microphone and said a few words about what I hoped the travelers in the subway would get from my work, mostly inspiration.  He had the same impulse, not to reflect exactly what was going on in the neighborhood, but to go into a very fantastical world. I think this was based on work he did for the for the New York City Ballet. And so we are just cutting up being dancers on that day. Next slide. Here's one of Marcel's beautiful murals that I see every day because I take this Bedford Avenue stop daily and it makes all the difference in the world that lights up the place. You stop thinking about whatever daily concerns you are and you kind of celebrate this explosion of color. Next slide. I was quite inspired by Elizabeth Murray, who I had seen her work for years and years. She decided to do this coffee cup. And I loved how she used the architecture and had the cup spanning this arch. I thought it was so clever. And she said that she felt it was appropriate because the people using this stop would have just had their morning cup of coffee. Now, that might seem a little far away from subway life, but it helped give me the impetus to put superheroes and and bold people in in a ballgame standing in a garden. Next slide. I think that's my last slide. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Catherine for sharing the story of the development of your work for the MTA subway system. And we're now thrilled to turn it over to Ye-Ling Chen, deputy director for MTA Arts and Design. Thank you so much. And thank you, Catherine, for such a great presentation. And then sort of bringing Elizabeth Murray's project. I feel like I'm also one of the portraits, like kind of carrying that inspiration and throughout my entire career. Let's say it's very, it's such a great pleasure to be here with you all today, as part of the Kupo Yui Hewitt's educational program to celebrate the Mac Nines exhibition, along with the great, talented work by Marianne. I really enjoyed that show. So with five minutes, it was a great challenge for me to put together a presentation. We have so far 350 commissions through our permanent person for our projects, close to half of which are by women others. So it's very difficult, but I try. So let me share my presentation with you all. There you go. Can you all see it? Yes. Great. So Arts and Design is the art department within the MTA. We introduced a wide range of programs, including the permanent person for art, digital art, graphic art, light box exhibits, poetry and motion, and music under New York. Super kudos to the impressive bodies of posters designed by Edward McKnight-Coffer for London Underground. Arts and Design too has a robust poster programs. Here I want to give a shout out to Lydia Brescia who managed these great programs for Arts and Design. We commissioned graphic artists to create posters that celebrated mass transit in New York area every year. This poster can be seen at subway stations or in the subway carts. These are the two 2020 commissions for posters that are by graphic artists by CJ Han to the lab and Paulo de Campos to the right. They all use either Central Park or Mita Manhattan as their as a kind of destination. These are the longer poster that we call art cart. They can be seen in subway carts. From the top is a small big world by Cleo Nick Piozaca. In the middle, Redbird Reave by Vanessa Bentley Newton on the bottom, Birdhouse Subways by John Parr. So next, I want to just go through seven women artists project just to give you all a glimpse of how these artists each through their own creative approach created artwork that tell the story for the people and about the place. Long Island Railroad Broadway station here in Flushing Queens, it serves a dense population of Asian Americans. So when Jin Sheng was working on her proposal, she was inspired by these mountains of broken ceramic charts during her visit to a county village in South Korea. So in Korea, partners customarily would sort of break those vessels if they are deemed imperfect. So ultimately, it's created like mountains of broken charts to be able to use these broken pieces for her projects. We work with her and, gratefully, the village donated three tons of sell down charts, and then have them shipped to upstate New York, where the fabricator is located. From here, you can see that the whole process of sorting through those charts and the break for the fabrication was like an archaeological finds. Now, the artwork stand at a busy intersection in Queens, reminding all of us of their distant homeland and the new life that's transformed here. Next project is titled The Dicks by Kelvin. It's a very unique project for the Knickerbocker station on the M line in Brooklyn. Kelvin is a certified welder. She used a plasma cutter. And for this project, she literally handcuffed all the steel plates into intricate lace like patterns in the form of steel shovels. The artwork now have a life in resume the life in the station and connecting the station with the architectural arch and the ornamental details often seen in the station's Bushwick neighborhood. And at the same time, blurring that boundary between domesticity and industry. The bus depot in Harlem is named Mother Clara Hale bus depot to honor Mother Hale who for 50 years care for children who are either sick or come from Brooklyn home. Similarly, when she next met was developing her proposal for these projects, she walked the neighborhood multiple times. And one day she picked up this child's drawing to the left, depicting a girl by the bus stop. And that become a source of color inspiration for her projects. We also later on conducted the drawing classes for students at PS244. Now the final artwork in colorful painted cloche was translated into mosaic glass that centers on a modern childlike figure embracing each other in an abstracted garden. The students drawing were also included in the glass portion of the artwork for the for the depot building on the sides. Now, moving along to the rebuilt subway station in World Trade Center that was destroyed by 9 11 and Hamilton created chorus that frame the station's new platform covering over 4,000 square feet of the space. And it's totally integrated into the station's architectural design. The artwork is a field of woven text taken from the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the US Declaration of Independence. Cut letters was very slightly by three millimeter, I believe, set against the the marble backgrounds, creating a wide on wide textile service that invites the writer to touch the text as they read along, creating a very powerful and at the same time intimate meaningful encounter. These underground crossings of text and people together form an underground chorus reminding us all of the civic ideal and foundational quality of life, which is so universal and so important. At Penn Station on 123 lines, Diana El-Hadi created two large mosaic artworks, one of which is on the 60 foot long south wall, as you see here, that El-Hadi intended a dialogue for between her artwork and what's the past of at Penn Station and currently an earlier projects that's still at Penn Station by Andrew Leicester that we commissioned. So this is a day and night figure who was who used to stand at the I believe the facade of original Penn Station building, but was later dismantled. For her artwork, she portrayed Godiva, who is a mythological female character, famously roam around the ruin of Palm Bay in well and Jensen's novel.  So this is the proposal rendering by El-Hadi and then the completed artwork now at on the wall at the station. When my image imagine that Godiva has come back to claim both the original Penn Station in its former glory, as well as to stake her presence in our modern time. This is a detail at Broadway Station in Astoria Queen's Outlook by Diane Carr is an imaginary saturated and color filled landscape. Carr is a painter. And she's just interested in the materiality of paint, also the bordering between representation and abstraction. The artwork depicts just like that. The artwork now installed at the station, that's totally transformed, depicting the wetland of the area before the human settlements. The color was actually taken from the nearby store signs, the park, public places, referencing the past and present of the neighborhood surrounding this elevated station. The last project I want to share today is the stunning artwork by Barbara Takanaga for the white plant stations in Westchester. Takanaga created two original paintings. And one small one for the glass on the platform, which later they are being digitally merged into the final composition for the fabrication into mosaic. Now the install artwork is the center piece in the station lobby. The dots and lines flowing from the deep bridge blue into the infinite space appropriately capture the city's energy and its history. On the site platform, his work in glass greets the commuter with the converging and disappearing with them just like the train movements. So I want to end the same with the same photos as Catherine has shared. It was such a precious moment of Catherine and Marcel in front of their artwork as we gathered in September to celebrate the completion of their projects with friends and family and public. Yeah, thank you all. Thank you so much, Eileen, for sharing this wonderful review designs by women for the MTA. Just before we dive into Zorian's presentation, who will be our last panelist to present, I just want to encourage everyone in the audience to submit questions using the Q&A function at the bottom of your zoom screen. And we look forward to dialogue with you following Zorian's presentation. So I'm pleased now to turn it over to Zorian Clayton, assistant curator of prints at the Victorian Albert Museum in London. Hello. Thank you very much for having me speak with you today. It's been amazing seeing all these fantastic public art in New York. And I can't wait to hopefully get there to see all of that and the Cooper Hewitt Calfa show in April. But I've been invited to sort of share a few of the women who were designing at the same time as Calfa, so contemporaries of him in the early commissioning of posters for the London Underground. And this is a fabulous one, which is a new acquisition for Cooper Hewitt by Annie Gertrude, Fletcher. And I love it. It's got this sort of subtly festive there with the sort of fur trims and the red hats. But when I first looked at it, I thought it was like a cuchette or something. But obviously the top half of the drawing is this sort of quiet time to travel. And then the bottom half is this busy, busy time. So this was recently given to the Cooper Hewitt, but they otherwise don't have an enormous amount of the designers who were women designers who were working for the Tube in the early days. But the V&A was lucky to be the recipients of some 1076 posters given by the Frank Pick, who commissioned a lot of these works and people working for the London Underground, mainly between 1911 and 1933. And a lot of those posters are by women. A shout out quickly to Terry Edelstein, whose Fantastic Art for All book contains a lot more detail on the subject. And a lot of statistics about how many women were commissioned to make posters for the Underground. And that the highest number in any of the pre-war years was just 21 out of 115 artists who were commissioned in 1931. Calphor, of course, is known as the poster king. And I suppose it's worth pointing out that a lot of the male artists were given these sort of pantheon style titles. But there is no mother of the poster or queen of the poster given out at this time, even though there were so many fantastic women who were designing at the time. The only one sort of compounded by the only moniker like that, the types that have managed to find, which was for the American poster designer Ethel Reed of the 1890s. And her moniker was the beautiful poster lady, which sort of sums up that disparity there. But here are just a couple of the favourites who I have done a bit of research on from the V&A collection. So these two by Vera Willoughby. She designed posters for the Underground between 1928 and 1935. And one of her most enduring motifs is this sunburst, which is used to lighten up the sky in this general joy poster. She sometimes worked under the name Vera Petrovna. And some sources state she was born in Hungary. But this was later deemed to be a fabrication to sort of spice up her life story. And she was actually from quite a dreary part of South London, where she was born in 1870. And it's much easier to find out a little bit more about her than many of the other commercial artists of the time, who it's often quite notoriously difficult to find out very much information, personal information about commercial artists from this era. But here are two more posters that she designed that it's more easier to find out about because she was married to a silent film star called Louis Willoughby from around 1900. And later she had an affair with the man who was known as the original Peter Pan. And he was adopted by J. M. Barry. He was much younger than her. So she's in the news a lot in the 20s and 30s for being scandalous and controversial and things. And they discuss her love life quite a bit. So that's why there's much more of a record for her. And she also had a daughter with Louis Willoughby called Althea Willoughby, who also designed posters for the London Underground. Sometimes their work is mixed up for each other because she worked in quite similar style to her mother. And somebody else that I wanted to talk about was Dorothy Burris, who made some lovely posters for the tube in the 1920s. And I hate zoos, but we know that Dorothy also hated them. She talked about feeling really sad about looking at the looking into the eyes of the caged creatures and things. But she did many, like many women were commissioned to do sort of family friendly attractions. So a lot of the zoo ones were done by women. And the book that you can see on the right, she did two of these in 1927. She did queer birds at the zoo and queer beasts at the zoo of all the most unusual animals to be seen. But she was described as a born poster artist in lots of 1920s of art press, commercial art magazine, things. And the influence of Japanese printmaking is certainly visible. And you can see her vertical signature there in both of them. And yes, she was she also sort of crops up in quite a few she did book illustrations for her partner, who was called Vera Hutchinson. So this is a picture of Dorothy on the left, one of Vera's books in the middle and Vera on the right there. And so they crop up in quite a few lesbian history books because they were friends with Radcliffe Hall, who say they've been quite a few memoirs, people's diaries and things of other sort of prominent society lesbians of the early 20th century. Dorothy was a member of the Society of Women Artists, which was founded as the Society of Female Artists in 1855. Then in 1869, they changed the name to the Society of Lady Artists, and it finally became the SWA in 1899. And they're still going under that name in London. They just had, I think last year, their 160th annual exhibition. But it both Vera and Dorothy's case, we have quite a number of examples of their work. But there are a few people who we just, they just seem to have one poster commission, and then no more they sort of disappear out of the record. And it's been quite difficult to find out about some of them and to find out why that was. But Frank Pick and the Underground, they were tied into the London Art Schools. And so a lot of students would get like their first break, or they'd get a commission as part of their graphic art degree. I love this tramways one, she's by Monica Rawlins. This is a photograph of her from 1922 and the posters 1926. She was quite elusive. Until I discovered there was a BBC Radio for 15 minute drama, which was written about her life in 2015, because her diaries have been left to the Welsh National Library. And Beth and Robert have found out all about her, but she had quit graphic design, basically, and moved to rural Wales to become a goose breeder. So that was why we couldn't find any more posters by her. And Dorothy Dix, who did this one of the host houses in Kent on the right, I could find out even less about her birth and death dates are not known. Dictionary's art dictionary that I found say she was a painter who flourished from 1895 to 1947. But for such a long career, it seems really unusual that very little about her would be known. And no other works come up. It's always this one poster. So she's not to be confused with an actress who is also called Dorothy Dix and an American gossip columnist of a similar era whose name was Dorothy Dix. But yeah, I keep trying, you know, the final person I just wanted to talk about was Dora Batty, who was one of the most prolific women designing for London Underground in the early period. I think she did just over 50 posters for them. And I love these, you know, very vogue-ish of the time modern women in this sort of super Trump Loy effect that she has in these. And, you know, these posters would have been extremely prominent in the public sphere. And yeah, she was just, you know, one of the this is one of a series, which was seasonal. So this is another one of the same of the same type. And she was born in 1891. She was the daughter of a reverend. And she also did a lot of book illustration, like all the other artists I've mentioned. But she was also called a celebrity of the poster in an article where she was exhibiting with Kalfa. But her name, I suppose, has sort of become less well known over time. But she also taught textile design from 1932 at the Central School in London. And she became head of textiles there throughout most of the 1950s, which is a realm that many women who were working in graphic design often found more work, even though if perhaps it wasn't always their chosen field, they were sort of pushed into textile design sometimes. And if you want to know more about that, there's an excellent blog about an artist called Lillian Dring, who made some fantastic posters at the same sort of time. But she was she found she couldn't find enough work as opposed to designer and she went into textile design, but it was not her chosen field. But I probably gone over, I probably overrun a little bit. But perhaps that's something that we can, that might come up in the questions when I'll stop my share and pass you back to Emily to start the Q&A. Great. Thanks so much to Zorian. And all of you for your wonderful presentations that took us through this great review of how women have brought their unique perspectives and creative talents to the design of the subway systems in New York and London. I was wondering if we could start out with a question to you, Catherine, for your contemporary perspective and to Zorian for more of a historical note on the particular importance of significance of the underground as an exhibition space and what particular opportunities it offered women that other more traditional venues did not. Well, one thing I noticed particularly is the level of enthusiasm and participation when I entered this new world of a woman designing for transit. I think galleries and art museums are intimidated. They can be a little rarefied. But everyone, everyone loved the idea of art in a public place like the subway in New York. It just became inclusive and people, everyone could relate to it. My own children were more excited about that than anything. Yes, I think it's quite an opportunity. There's some great quotes from from the 20s and 30s where people said that they missed their trains because they were admiring the posters and the tunnels were described as gallery spaces and things, but obviously poster design for the most part has really dropped off since the mid 20th century and the big ad agencies. It goes into much more stock photography and not artworks anymore. But it has been very much replaced in the public sphere with fantastic commissioned art like this instead of posters. I think that's what's ruling the the tunnels now visually. Certainly the appeal of reaching such a broad audience, both today and historically, you know, is a great advantage to this work being seen by all its democratic spirit, its ability to introduce the public to new styles, while also giving them necessary information. And it's great to hear that it creates a dialogue with the public. And so Ye-Ling, I was wondering if you could talk to us a bit about feedback that you received from commuters, public opinion, how that dialogue goes with with MTA Arts and Design. Yeah, sure. Happy to. And before I jump over to that question, I want to also add to the previous question for sure. Based on my role as the kind of commissioning entity, it really is given the artist an opportunity to do their own each of their own unique creative practices to design artwork for a specific site for a specific group of audience. That really provided a unique narrative about the place that's why we always call it has to be original, it has to be specific. And why is it different from more conventional exhibit space is that it has that sense of permanence. So their artwork would be, we say permanently, install and live in that subway station. So that to me is a difference, kind of a pretty important point. I think a lot of artists do embrace that quality. I also want to say that something McNeil had mentioned so candidly is that he firmly believed that modern art should move beyond the walls of museum and galleries to infiltrate all elements of daily life. And that's the essence of public art. And so yeah, just what artists are given the opportunities to be able to fulfill the role of art for social and cultural engagement. So so that's my my thoughts. So moving on to the to the feedback. I want to give a few examples from different perspective as well. From the from the public, I've always, I had so many memorable experiences of having the public come over or stop midway. They were blown away by the artwork that was being installed at the station at the time. And just to say, Oh, my God, it's so wonderful. I remember for Jinxin's project at Broadway station on Northern Railroad, that was actually my very first project as a junior manager and curator. I saw people just walk up and and reach out their hand touch those ceramic shards. And that that's very touching for me. For the perspective of the community, I want to say that our experience of working through the commissioning process, the selection process for mother health bus depot, how how supportive of the the local community task force is to because they really wanted to have an artwork that represent their themselves. So we work with them hand in hand and selected Jinxin Smith. And at the end, we become dear friends with the community. So that's why community input. It's so important to us to our practice and our selection process. Lastly, for the artist, Catherine has say a lot of how positive this experience experience is to her. I also remember when we were at the station with together with Diana for her installation at Penn Station, she nailed down and then sort of like very carefully wanted to find where she secretly hide her name and her mother's name and her son's name in a very small, small mosaic piece when she found that she was in tears and then she faced time with her mother and to show her the exact spot where the family the names of the family was being kind of inside. So yeah, it's it's just the and I'm sure my colleague has a lot more to say. So but it's I think for all the perspective, it's been a very rewarding experience. And I hope it is the same for our audience as well. Those are wonderful stories about the deeply personal connection that artists feel to the work but also the ways in which communities are receptive and reactive and responsive to art and design around them in their home stations, which after all is a very personal experience for us all. We all feel connected deeply rooted to our neighborhoods and our daily commuting experience starts and ends in the same place for most of us every single day. So that becomes a deeply personal process in and of itself. There are a few questions here about materials and medium and I wonder, Zorian, if you could speak a bit to the importance of the poster as a medium that was present in the underground system. And Catherine, if you might be able to tell us a bit about translating your work to a mosaic structure and maybe a link you could weigh in on why mosaics have so often been a medium of choice on the transit experience. And we'll posters on paper can last hundreds of years in the museum but out on the walls of the city, they are quite a fragile thing. But there's loads of lovely examples of where posters have been transformed into tiles or in ceramics in some way, and that they have a permanent so in Germany, there's quite a few stations where they have the poster grates from the 1900s, 1910s, the Sach Placate artists, their posters are still there in, you know, 120 years later in tile form. And there's a great one in London in Laytonstone in the tunnels going into that station is where Alfred Hitchcock was born. Lots of Alfred Hitchcock posters have been turned into tiles. So it's amazing. I love that. Interchanging of materials and then making, you know, posters be in situ in a more permanent way. I was a bit skeptical that a glass mosaic could be my that my paintings could be translated into glass mosaic. And I was there, present as they were making them. And I must say, I thought they did an amazing job. They're they're very talented at getting the effects that they get. And my paintings turned all sparkly. In some ways, they were given a dimension that I really appreciated. And when my artist friends found out that I had artwork in the subway, one question we always ask each other is, Oh, how wonderful, how long will it be up? And how satisfying it was to look them in the eye and say, forever? Well, let's hope so. That was a particular thrill. I'm sure. I can only imagine. Yellen, do you have anything to add to the conversation in terms of the history of art in mosaic for the subway system? And it's kind of continuing popularity and use today? Yeah, I have a lot to say, but short. Long story short. Yes, we transit environment is a very challenging environment. It's also for New York, it's over a century old. We're dealing with a lot of challenges to keep up with the the time technology while being able to provide much more accessible services. Our art design was born in 1985, based on the cornerstone of the subway funders, firm believe that the transit system should be a great public work, not just for the for being accessible, being efficient, but also at the same time, it needs to be to have that emphasis on the architectural investments in its graft and good design. So we carry we carry that mission through to what we do today. For the subway stations, often time, the available canvas space for us are those walls, and to be able to introduce our work that's available, and then to for our audience, but at the same time, they have to be durable and easy to maintain and then that say, that's why a key elements of how we have a range of very durable materials for the artwork that we've commissioned so far. That being mosaic, being glass for mostly the elevated station on the platform level for metal for the the commuter rail station, or whenever the space that the opportunities may available for for us. And in some cases, we may have mixed media or even lighting our work when it's possible. I enjoyed how you called a wall of a subway station at canvas. And that was a really nice metaphor to use. And I think thinking about the placement of where the art and design falls in the visitor pathway in the station is an interesting exhibition challenge, but also, of course, important in order to catch the viewer, the passerby's attention at the correct moment in their commuting pathway. And there are traditional places where we expect to see these installations now. Catherine, I wondered if you could talk about where your work is located physically within the station? We had a great comment from an attendee who said that positioning a superhero, a flying superhero nearby to a stairwell was inspiring for the swift run down the stairs or up the stairs. Did you consider any of your works in particular in terms of their location within the station? And how did that play out for you? Yes, in particular, those stairwells because we were told right from the beginning that this would be something that the travelers would look up and see as they were going down stairs. And I had already done the two paintings of flying superheroes. And so I thought to myself, oh, that would be great for those two places. And so that that was that problem solved. I had more questions about the other places. The fact is that both the L line that goes from Manhattan to Brooklyn has become much more crowded just in the past decade, because of the amount of people that consider Brooklyn their home, but feel they're part of Manhattan. So there's a lot of traffic between the two. And so both the first Avenue station and the Bedford Avenue station were needed to be expanded and also comply with disability laws. So they both had elevators and the mezzanine section became almost three or four times as big. It's still packed with people enjoying it. And maybe I should mention that New York City has a percent for art law so that when a subway is renovated, part of the plan is to set aside money for artwork, which is so great. And that's how a lot of these projects are come into being. Excellent. And that leads right into a question that we had from another attendee about how the particular stations are chosen for these new commissions. Yelling, is there anything that you would like to add on that point? Yeah, great questions. Thank you. Our permanent person for our program is tied to the overall MTA capital program. And so under which, when there is an opportunity for our allocation, and there is a kind of established formula, so then we could use it to make plans and start our selection process to commission others to create our work for the given station. So that's one thing. And I just want to share that. I'm sure there will be other good questions. For sure. No, thanks so much for sharing that update about how the process works. Zorian, how about in London and the both the placement of the posters within the stations and the choice of the particular station that was being renovated or remodeled to include new new art and design commissions? Back then or now, because I'm not too sure about now, I don't think we have quite as ambitious a public art program in London underground. There is a great series, which is called Art on the Underground, which is current, but that is still poster form. It's not big permanent installations. But back at the time, yeah, there were lots of different sizes of posters that were all designed for different parts. And so some are about the size just a bit bigger than an average laptop screen. You can see some of Emily's ones. And they're great for collecting as well, because they're not so big. But yeah, the ones the main ones in the collection are sort of just over an A1 size. But yeah, there were many different kinds that were designed in formats that they had. So yeah, very prolific. And about 120 artists I would say a year would be commissioned. And in the time I was talking about to design different ones. So it's quite diverse and very diverse styles. And some are quite traditional, as you saw, you know, the sort of landscape ones that just look like lovely landscape paintings, but then some of them were really progressive and bold and new art styles and things. So it was a very interesting mix of of styles and fashions and ideas and things that people might encounter when they went down there. And yeah, just such strong illustration that I'm sad that we live in a time when it's just quite bad stock photography things.  Every other poster I see, I just can't believe people paid to produce it. They're rubbish today, for the most part. You got to go to poster biennials and graphic design circles to find the good stuff because it is still out there. But unfortunately, it's not so visible on the street. Well, thanks to the V&A's incredible online collection, at least we can mine history for creative inspiration and see those links between what felt very new in the early 20th century that can still look so contemporary to our eyes today. That's one of the things that I find remarkable in looking back at both Kaufer and Doren's work, how experimental they were stylistically and how fresh and relevant their work still feels. There are some questions about the logistics in terms of the commissioning process. And Zorian mentioned that there were hundreds of opportunities given out in the early 20th century for artists to become engaged with design for the underground. Ye Lin, what is the commissioning process like in terms of the logistics, the call and the numbers of proposals that you received? Yeah, that's exactly what I expect the question will come up. And I see quite a few. So yeah, happy. We have a very established panel process, which because we are a public agency, is also procurement work. So we begin by posting open call through our own website, social media, we do outreach to local arts and cultural organization institutions. We also post post our open call through Nightfall. Do our best to reach out to a broader audience as possible to encourage them to apply to the opportunity. We then our very talented team of curators and managers, we would then kind of screen those submissions and then come up with the pool of artists that to show to the panel. Our panel of juries is composed of five members, one being art and design, one being the architect, it could be the chief architect or project architect, and three being what we call arts professional. We invite arts professionals from the museums or arts councils, works that are based in the neighborhood where the station would receive the art to serve as a panelist. At the first panel, the panelists will review the pool of artists. And at the conclusion of the first panel meeting, we would select a handful of artists, finalists to participate in this process. Subsequently, we held the artist orientation to just go over all the logistics of the project, including a visit to the station decides when possible. The artists will be given somewhere around six to eight weeks to work on their proposals. And then the second, also the final panel meeting we convene the voting panelists come back. I would also mention one key participant is the community. Their input is very important to us, even though they are just on the adversary capacity. But we do we do hear, we want to hear from them. Because their voice is very important to us and to the panel. So at the end of the the second panel meeting, the panel would vote and select the artists to receive the commission. So that's that's a process. So it's a lot to extend beyond that. In a 2019 hyper logic article, it said it reported that we over this year, this many years, we are in our 36 years, I believe, also design has a better track record with commissioning 48% of women artists in our in our collection. More than the top museums in the United States, which I think at that point is was only 13%. How did we plan for that? So I want to hear quote by Sandra because Sandra Blackworth, who is the director of us and design, she when she was giving the interviews, she actually say it just happened. It's the by product of the process, which I totally agree. We didn't plan for that. But because of the process itself that allows the artist to apply the artist to spread the word, we ask the panelists to recommend artists who if they are they happen to be women, they may want to recommend their fellow women artists. So there are just a lot of variabilities that happen. But to add to that great point of Sandra's, I want to say that we it's not we still have way to go to bring that equity to a point where we can be probably say that we are we are somewhat satisfied. Today we are facing we are working with our colleague to bring art to to a number of the ADA station that we that's receiving the ADA upgrades, like MTA is working on adding elevators and stairs to stations, like the one that Katrin has our work installed this fall. And so our I take it as also my personal mission to bring art to our station that can be at the same time, much more accessible and much more inclusive. Could I add something to what yelling because I noticed that when we met as a group of finalists, maybe there were about nine of us. It was a wonderful range of people. Some at the beginning of their careers, I noticed two of them were my former students. Some who specialty was drawing, which translates well into a into a project, some whose specialty what was social political art, especially immigration, I think they were, I think I think that's a hot topic, as they say. And from all parts of the art world, I was impressed with the diversity and range of people applying. I don't know how that happened, maybe just happened. Well, it's certainly inspiring to hear how both the makers for art and design and our transit systems and the audience for art and design is expanding and diversifying and increasing in scale through these wonderful commissions. And sorry, and I was wondering, you know, Catherine alluded to the great diversity in the pool who was applying for the commission at the time she was the range of approaches to art, but also stages that those artists were in their career. And you mentioned in your presentation that oftentimes this commission could be a pivotal turning point in the career for a woman artist and designer. And I was wondering if you could just speak a bit more to how it provided that transformation for them. Yes. I think it's a really great opportunity. Again, I can't speak about art schools now, but the central school in London at the time, they were given like, I mean, it's a huge commission to do right at the beginning of their career in, you know, early 20s to then be having such a prominent work of art straight out there in the city, I think, because a really great opportunity and something that they should build back into art schools if they're not doing that kind of thing. But yeah, a lot of them then did get jumped into other commissions. So there was a woman called Ruth Sands, who we have some work by, she had one post for the underground, and then she picked up a lot of commissions for some of the really big, fancy department stores like Dairy and Tom's and things in London. So it often was just a very prominent way to get people's work out and a great way to support young artists, I think.  I got this message on my social media, and it said, please bring some artwork to my subway station, it really needs it. Yelling, I'll tell you later which one it is. Yeah, I was going to ask you, sure, please. Well, Catherine alluded to this a bit in her presentation, but I was wondering if we might all talk about our home stations, and as either makers or commissioners or being design conscious consumers of art and design, maybe how your involvement with the field has made it so that you see the station differently, or a station that you pass by frequently. I don't know, what do you notice differently about the transit system having worked and intersected with the sector? I'm noticing a lot of change, but I feel like sort of going over that. The neighborhood that I work in and live in, it's grown so much. Of course, we went through a pandemic. We all applied for this commission before COVID. And then we had to wait. And I wasn't even very patiently waiting for it to actually happen. The glass murals had to be shipped from Germany on a boat, and then transported somehow underground to the subway zones. And all that time, I was just really nervous that the whole thing would fall apart and never happen. But it did. And then we had this really joyous celebration in September on a beautiful September day, wasn't it? Yelling, it was such good weather and such good spirits in the whole neighborhood. I had many friends who who were just bursting with curiosity who came to see what was happening. And I think it was a feeling that that the whole community got a big jump, a big boost by by having the MTA single us out for a better subway station. Cannot agree more, Catherine. And I think for the past year and a half, close to two, many of our practices have shifted that we just have to adapt with so much unknowns, which to say that there was such a joyful moment for all of us to get together to celebrate our work that were finally installed at the station.  She was the firm believer, and she kept on holding the Ford championing for caterings and my sales projects, coordinating with their galleries, the PR reps on behalf of Arts and Design. And that is how we were able to all get together to celebrate. So I mean, it definitely is a team effort. And she had a baby right in the middle of it. Yes. Yes. Yes. I cycle so I don't usually go in the underground if I can help it. But I did want to I did hear of a brilliant mural that has just been opened in Brixton subway underground in London, which is called five more minutes. And it's by Joy Labinjo. And it's a celebration of Afro Caribbean hair salons, which are numerous around Brixton. So that's an interesting one you can look up for murals that are happening in London, because there are some not quite as many, I think is MTA, but check it out. I'll put her name in the chat. Thanks, Zorian. I think we've all shared insights about the art and design of subway stations today. And I hope that everyone in the audience will have their eyes open ever more wide to the art and design around them as commuters, as everyday passengers, as visitors to other cities on other cities, public transport systems. It's been wonderful to hear everyone's perspectives that they bring to this field as makers, as historians, as commissioners, as curators. And I've really enjoyed hearing this historical arc of how the art and design of the transit system has expanded the diversity of makers and the audience for these cultural moments in our cities. So thanks so much to everyone for joining us today. We really appreciate all the engagement from the audience. And many thanks again to our wonderful slate of speakers for spending time with us and sharing your creative perspectives today. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all.


Hey guys, Brian Hare here with free saloneducation.com and today I'm going to be going over a little product review of the new iron from Paul Mitchell. It's the NeuroSmooth. I'm a big fan of it. We've had it for a little while now. I've been playing with it here in the salon and I've got to say I'm actually really impressed with some of the stuff that it does. I've seen lots of press I guess in all the magazines about this and I read all the stuff and I saw the specs but I really think that getting to use it is what really won me over. I'm a big fan one. I like how it looks. It looks cool. It's slick. It's sleek. Anybody can use it and you just look cool with it plus it goes with other outfits now. Some of the cool, sciency stuff that they have in their description of the specs. My breakdown of it is it does heat up to 450 degrees. That's awesome. The like is that now it's customizable on a great screen for you that will tell you find medium or yeah, find medium and coarse hair and professional use. The reason that it cites me so much is because now I can teach my guests. They're not just turning an iron on and then running God knows how hot of an iron over their hair. I can teach them, okay, you have fine hair so you need to use this at this setting so on and so forth and it's causing a lot less damage coming back to me. I'm a big fan of the titanium plates on this because it really does just glide over the hair. Super smooth, super easy. They took the bevel off of the edges of the plates here so there's no pull or anything like that. It really is just super smooth. Heats up really fast. I like because I don't have to leave the iron on all day. I can just plug it in, start it in 30 seconds I've got the heat that I need. It's also great for me to sell to my guests because it has an automatic shut off which is I think a really big deal because you've all heard the stories of someone left something on too long and burned down an entire town and now I know I'm not going to be the one that causes that so that's good. Big long cord so I don't get stuck, I don't trip myself, it's really, it's hairdresser friendly. It does a really great job. I think one of the biggest revelations for me, I see it's on all the boxes, it's in all the magazines of this stuff, they're talking about the SmartSense microchip and I didn't really know what that was and so I looked into it a little bit and it turns out what it is, it's a great little microchip in there that is going to make sure that this stays the heat that I set it to by checking and regulating the temperature 50 times a second and I read it, sounded cool but when I realized what that means is when I'm working with a guest, say they've got really, really long hair, when that iron goes in by the time I get to the end of the hair I haven't lost any heat, it's been regulated and checked so many times it's just as hot when I get to the end as it was when I went in the root so what that means for me is that I'm not really going to have to make more than just one pass, two passes tops to get really great results so in case you can't tell I'm kind of a fan so I say go get your hands on one, try it, it's been fun, thank you guys stick with us at freesaloneducation.com for tons more fun stuff like this, thanks.


Welcome to Psychology 1609, the Neuroscience of Learning and Introduction to Mind, Brain, Health, and Education. This is a tour of the Canvas classroom so that you can understand how things are laid out, where to find information, and to make sure that you're on top of everything as far as being able to communicate with us whenever you need to during the course. If you open this page, you'll see that on the left hand side, you'll have the Canvas toolbar. This is where you have your account information, so you can change your profile. Please add a profile picture that's not of a cat or a dog or something cute. We want your real face there, please. This is also where you can activate your ePortfolio if you'd like to maintain all the documents throughout the course there. In the course section, you'll be able to see all the list of the classes that you might be taking. The calendar will also list all of the due dates for all of the different courses that you're in. This is a link to the inbox, to the email within Canvas. Please keep the communication about course topics within our Canvas email. Please don't send us emails to our private emails. Make sure that we maintain correspondence within the course structure. If you need any help with Canvas, if you need any tutorials or backup information or video guidance, you can also click on the Help button here. You'll notice then on the next toolbar here is what's actually going on in the class. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through each of these different buttons so that you know where you're going to be able to find stuff. Okay. So from here, you can scroll down and you'll see the information related to the syllabus. And if you click that, you'll be able to see the hyperlink to the information about the course, the descriptors there, all of the different information that you need there. Or you can just look at the brief description that's written here into the syllabus. If you scroll down a bit further, then you see the course outline, which describes all of the different modules here. This will be a link to the teaching team so you can get some information about the people teaching this class, as well as the Mind, Brain, Health, and Education student resources, which have things like links to glossaries about Mind, Brain, Health, and Education, as well as other programs and conference opportunities. So that's what you'll find on the home page. You can also just jump straight to your calendar from here if you wanted to do that, and to see any important notifications. And you'll also see right at the top here that your announcements will show up right at the very top of the home page, okay? So if you wanted to go and see any announcements, for example, you remember, well, last week there was an announcement about something else that I needed to remember. You click on the announcements and you'll see all of the announcements are listed here. So you get a series of them and they're all listed in reverse chronological order. The next button has APA resources, and that's because the language of our course is the American Psychological Association. And so in order to communicate, we ask you to write in this format. That means you have to cite in this format. So please click on each one of these hyperlinks and an update yourself. APA has changed to the seventh edition as of February 2020. So there is an updated version here of all the information. So there's a style blog and there's also a non graded quiz if you want to sort of test yourself on the way you do APA structure. So we hope you use this, love this. We know that it's kind of a mini psychological torture in it of itself to try to remember all these different rules. But we tried to do our best to help you with that because you'll see that there's an APA template there. So we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get to the project, which is down here. So after the APA resources, you'll find a very special page that talks about assignments. So the assignment page is really interesting. So if this has all of your assignments here. So this is the way the quizzes are organized, the way the discussion boards are set up, and the way that your semester project is submitted. And so all of these things are listed here. If you'd like, you can also list them by due dates so that you can see in the order that things are due rather than by type. So you can modify this in the way that's most useful to you. But some people like to just look at the calendar. Other people like to look at the assignment date so that they see when things are due there. But go ahead and structure this in the best way that serves your purposes. It only changes on your page, so nobody else sees that. But it's one way to stay on top of the work. The next is a really fun space. This is our resources. The bundles link takes you to a list of all of the different resources that are open to you to use and to support you during each of the different weeks' reviews. So as you'll notice in the instructions for each of these, during each week's module, you're invited to look at at least one resource from each of the bundles. So say that we are in week one and we're just getting an overview of Mind, Brain, Health, and Education. By the way, these are listed alphabetically. But on the side here, you'll see which weeks they're related to so you can find them easily. And I'll also show you that these are directly hyperlinked from the module page. We'll look at that in just a second. But once you're inside the bundles, you'll see that there's a variety of resources. There's around about maybe a hundred different things here that you can choose from. Please watch at least one or read at least one of these before we have our live class. Why do we ask that? We ask that so that you can come with an additional perspective to the class, that you've looked at some of the information about Mind, Brain, and Education. So the instructions are basically go ahead and skim over the information that's here. And if you choose, okay, this is something I really want to look at. I'd like to see educational neuroscience exploring cognitive processes that underlie learning. That sounds really cool. So if you just click on that, you'll see that all of these hyperlinked directly to the information. So we try to make this as easy on you as possible so that you can have easy access to the information. And so as I mentioned before, there's around a hundred different topics here. There's videos, podcasts, and there's other academic papers here. Choose one of them before you come to class. If you're a grad student, you're asked to look at at least two of them. But the idea here is to explore and look at the information and enjoy the opportunity to see a variety of resources that don't cost you anything instead of tying you to a textbook. The other point of the bundles is so that you have multiple entry points. We know that in our class, we have some people taking this class for graduate credit, and this is your last class. And you are totally steeped in the information and know a whole lot about neurobiology, for example. But we also know that we have undergraduates in our class, and we also have people taking this class for non-credit who might be taking their first online class ever in their lives and have never studied mind, brain, and education formally. And so we have a variety of resources. We have some things that are kind of light, and we have some things that are more complex. And we want you to choose what's most appropriate for you as an entry point to the information. So if you go back out here to the bundles, you'll see that there's at least one and oftentimes two bundles per week. And just below that, you'll also see that there are additional bundles. And these additional bundles are sort of born of people's semester projects. And we'll talk about that in just a second. But as people chose to dive into different areas of study, we created bundles with them so that there's more information, so that people have an easier jump into the information. So it's not too complex. For example, last semester, somebody wanted to look at the ideas of whether writing by hand or writing on a keyboard was more beneficial to learning. So we created a literacy and handwriting bundle for them by looking at and researching with them, trying to find the most up-to-date information possible on that topic. So you'll see that there are bundles that are related to each module, which are the ones on the top here, class-specific bundles with the weeks next to them. And then you'll see there's additional bundles that are listed down here. So one of the ways that you might think about approaching your semester project is maybe just pop into a couple of the bundles and see what's going on in there and try to see if any of that information relates to a topic that you might be most interested in and sort of poke around there and see where your interests are sparked. That's one way to also approach your semester project is to think about what you're really interested in to look at the kinds of research that are occurring in that area. So once you get down to the bundles, you'll get to this other link, which has to do with class recordings. We try to make this kind of easy as a one-stop area for you. So every single week, week one, week two, week three, all the way through 15 is listed here. And you'll see they have a similar structure. You'll see that the things that you do before class, you know, the pre-class video, the things that happened during class, this is the live class recordings of our class, right? And then if there's a section that week which graduate students are required to attend, but not undergraduates, but many undergraduates do come anyways because the information is interesting, it's a deep dive normally into an area of the topic of the week. So for example, in week two, we have functional neuroanatomy, how does the brain work? So here's one about brain basics that goes into the fundamental areas of the brain and another one that's on neurotransmitters, how does those actually work, okay? So we have that information here and each of these hyperlinks back to the video and also here to the slides that relate to that. So this is the area on this side here, the class recordings where you can find all of the information for your class. So this is where you find the recordings, where you find the PowerPoints and you can also see the layout of exactly what's up and coming. So these things are highlighted in blue right now because they've already passed, but your class will be hyperlinked as they come along, as those different units become live. And we open up each module with two weeks in advance notice because we know that many of you are busy people and you're traveling or you have to organize other class obligations. So we try to give you enough leeway so that you can look at the information beforehand if you need to rearrange your schedule in that way. So if you want to look at specific assignments, you'll see that there's a link for discussion boards, there's a link for your quizzes and there's a link for your semester projects as well. Okay, so just so that we'll continue going down this, but just so you know, this is a assignment specific area and this lists all of the discussion boards for the class, weeks one through weeks 15. So in case you were missing information on a discussion board, you can go back in and you can review it here. So you can click on any of the discussion boards. It reiterates the instructions and then it shows you and then you'll see the chain of responses there. So if you're given a red flag and somebody says, hey, by the way, you did not do the discussion board responses for week eight, you can just go through discussions here and jump right to it. Also, your grades are available 24 seven here. We try to stay as up to date as possible. We ask for one week to do our grading and so you can generally expect to get your grades back within the week for any assignment that we have. This class has a whole lot of small assignments or don't have a huge weight to them, but there's a lot of them and this is meant to keep you on task focused with the information but to have low stakes as far as all of the different assignments are concerned. So as an individual, you would be able to click on here and you will see your grades for each of the different assignments. So right now as I'm a test student here, there's some things I give myself 100 for and some things to zero. So this isn't a very good indicator right now, but just so that you know that you'll be able to see the grades for every single assignment that you have and you'll be able to see if and when you might have something missing, for example, and take advantage of our rewrite policy just so that you are clear. The syllabus really spells out how you can and should rewrite any assignments for a better grade. We think that anybody who can learn from their mistakes should be given the opportunity to do so. So, but you do have to do that within a certain amount of time. So generally if you submit something, it's graded. You have up to one week to resubmit it for a better grade based on the corrections that are suggested. Next down here on the toolbar are the live classrooms and this is just a hyperlink to help you get into our Zoom classrooms. So instead of having to remember this code to get into the classroom, you just click on the live weekly class link, for example, and so for our synchronous class, you just click here and it'll take you straight into the Zoom classroom. You'll see here that we also have Zoom classrooms set aside for the section room, which is different. It's a different meeting room than the live classroom as well as a hyperlink to the faculty office hours so that you can go into these different Zoom rooms. There's also a fourth room that's open to you. You can meet up with your fellow classmates in the student to student Zoom room that's open 24-7. We never go in there as a teaching staff.  Also on the same live classroom page, you'll see that there's other hyperlinks to Zoom support in case you would like to do a tutorial or to get a better understanding of how Zoom works. Next on the toolbar is modules and in the modules link, you'll see that we have each of the classes. Now, we have 15 modules and we have 15 weeks of classes and so you can go into the modules directly through this link. So rather than going in through the home page to this particular unit, you could also get to the exact same place by going in through the module page so you can go and just click on that and it'll take you back to that exact same page, okay? So you can enter either through the home page or through the module page if you're looking for the information here. Now, what's so great about this particular page is that it helps layout and this is an identical layout for every single week, every single module that we have. We share the main topic, we show the big idea and then you'll have three steps. One is what you have to do before class, one is what you do to get into class and the third step is what you do after the class. So as our course is 100% flipped with a synchronous meeting time, this means that there's more things to do before class than there are to do during and after class, okay? So we'd like to motivate you to take the quiz of the week to watch the pre-class video. If you'd like to, you can also download the slides that go with that pre-class video and then to go into the bundles and skim the titles of the information in those bundles and then as an undergraduate, choose at least one of the resources from the bundles and as a graduate, choose at least two resources. So you hyperlink into this, this takes you back to, you remember we had this bundles page link here. This is another way into the bundles, you'll find that there's a lot of repetition here so that you can get to the same information through different routes, okay? Then after that, we'd like you to go to the discussion board, remember we said you can get to the discussion boards here, but you can also just click on it here and it'll take you to the prompt for this particular week. Based on this particular prompt, we'd like you to write your response which is between 200 and 250 words and please respect that, we really want you to try to learn to synthesize your ideas and that is part of our rubric, if you'd like to see the rubric for that, you just click on this, it says show rubric and you'll see how the grading is done for that particular assignment, okay? So going back into our module again, if we are here in this sample module three here, after you've done the quiz, watch the video, gone into the bundles and done the discussion board, if you have certain questions that have jumped out to you and that you're doubting that you're wondering about, I watched the video on plasticity and I'd like to know if there's a difference between experience-based plasticity versus changes in plasticity due to therapy. I wanna talk about that. You click here and this will take you to a different discussion board which gives us a heads up on that these are things that we need to discuss in our live class. So this information here is gonna help guide us as to things that we need to help go deeper into when we meet in the synchronous live class, okay? Additionally, if there's a logistical question, this means if you have questions, if you say, listen, this hyperlink doesn't seem to be working on this page or something like that, just click here and then you can also put that question up and we try to stay on top of that really quickly so that you'd get a response to that, okay? That's step one. Those are the things you do before class and that's a lot more than typical classes because this is a flipped classroom setting. So just be prepared that there's a lot more work to do before class than there is after class, okay? This means that the homework effectively is done before you get to the live class, okay? So after you've done that, on the day on our synchronous meeting time, you just simply click on here, this takes you back. Remember we said that you can go to the live classroom from here while you can also just click on it here. Does the same thing, it takes you to our live Zoom class. In the last few minutes of our class, you'll have a reflection to do which has six sentences basically, three things you didn't know before the class, two things that you're curious about and want to know more about and one thing that you might consider changing in your personal professional life based on the information that you've learned in this week's class, okay? So you can either click on that or in the live class we also put the same hyperlink to this assignment into our chat in the Zoom room so you'll be able to hyperlink directly to it so you won't have to search for that link. But if you wanted to, you can also go here, okay? Then after we finish meeting in that live class, you can give us some feedback if you'd like. You can tell us this work, this didn't work, I really wish you would do something else differently. Help us know how we can support you better in the learning. Also listed here under the follow up for the classes are the different sections that are offered that week. We usually have one or two sections per week to give you enough options so that you can meet the minimum requirement of the number of sections and we allow you to choose the ones that you want to go to. You're not obliged to but you're encouraged to come to all of them if possible but if you need to miss some of them, you can go ahead and have a preview of what those sections would be. Some of the sections are prerecorded. For example, this one on neuronal cell types was done by a TA of mine in a previous year and this is a prerecorded neuronal cell type section. This is kind of giving you a little bit more flexibility because you have the entire week to do the three to one reflection after you've watched that video or you can come to the live sections. This one would be on the Connectome project for example. I'm gonna meet live in the section room and you still have to complete that three to one. So remember the way that we document attendance is through your three to one assignment that's done after you have attended the sections. You can also download slides that are available there and then we give you a reminder that in addition to that initial discussion board post, you have to reply to two other learners and this will jump you to that reply area where you have to read the post of at least two other people and give a reply to them in 75 to 100 words and these cannot be things like, oh, nice work. They have to be really substantial because we're looking for an exchange there and a way to develop different perspective taking on the information, okay? So that's the way the modules page is set up. Every single week has an identical structure so you can jump into any single week and you're gonna have exactly the same structure here. Main topics, big idea, step one, step two, step three, they're identical. So you can use this page as kind of a checklist to make sure that you get through all of the work each week. As we said before, there's a lot of assignments but they're small in the weight that they have but they're meant to keep you on top of the information. There's a link here to the people which will take you to a list of all of your classmates and there's a link here to the quizzes. Again, the quiz is linked on the module page but if you click here and just wanna look at any quizzes and you want to go ahead, for example, and try to do make an attempt on all of the quizzes that's terrific because as we said before, you can take the quizzes 100 times. We really don't care. In fact, it's actually a good idea if you take the quiz before you watch the videos and come to the live class so you get a baseline. You know, what is it, where's my starting point? What are my gaps and knowledge because that would actually help you highlight the things you're looking for when you watch the video. So go ahead and do the quiz beforehand, during, after. The average person in our class will take the quiz at least four times per week in order to get that perfect score because it's one way to get 25% of your grade, 100%. So please take the time to review that. It really helps you shore up vocabulary. It's just multiple choice or true and false so it's just knowledge-based information but it's well worth doing, okay? The next button here on the menu is the semester project and it's kind of elaborate page because we wanna give you as many details as possible. Don't get overwhelmed by this because we have an optional workshop that you can come to for an hour just before each assignment is due so that you get a better sense of how to organize and structure each piece that's submitted, okay? So this is the reason we do the semester project, sort of the big idea here and the submissions. If you're an undergraduate, you only have to do the first two submissions and this is due by week six. However, you have through week 15 to perfect it, okay? If you're a graduate student, you have to do all five submissions and there's an optional submission six in case anybody needs that cushion to be able to improve and get the grade that they want. You can also do a rewrite of submission five which would be considered submission six at the very end. We begin the intake of these submissions starting at the end of week four. We have submission one where you try to decide your topic, come up with a research question and begin to do your literature reviews by week eight. Do the analysis and come to some conclusions about your topic. Each of the different submissions also has some guidance in a video if you want. How do you develop a good research question? How do you write a great literature review? How do you come to an analysis? What do conclusions look like? Additionally, we hope you take the time to visit and become very familiar with the library. We'll get there in just a second about the resources that Harvard has for you. And since we know that one of the best ways to achieve or complete something or fulfill requirements is if you have something called a worked model, we have several sample papers from previous years where students have given us permission to share their work. So you can see how successful work looks. So do have a look at some of those older papers. You can see certain problem areas, things that worked well for the papers. And you can have a look at that and that should give you a better framing of what it is you're after when you do the semester project. And look at this list of journals that are very important for the mind, brain health and education field that may be of use to you as you try to explore and look for different topics. So even just looking at the titles of some of these journals will probably give you some really cool ideas about topics that you might want to pursue. As we promised in the APA section, there's a lot of information about APA structure. But here on the semester project page, you'll also see that at the very bottom there, we have the APA word template that I mentioned to you before. We also have guidance on how to do annotated bibliographies.  So this template is done in APA levels one, two, three, four, they're sort of spelled out for you so that you're able to use this basic structure so you don't have to use a lot of head space on thinking of the format and the structure. You can really think more about the content. And so our goal with creating the template and asking you to please use that is to avoid all these silly mistakes that happen with APA citations, okay? So the next button after the semester project is looking at student locations. We like to see how many different countries around the world that our students come from and which states in the United States because it adds a whole lot to our perspective taking on each of the topics. Below that is a list of student resources. Now this page will link you to a new page. You'll have to click here and this will take you to the Harvard pages of student resources, all right? So here we have information about careers, academic health, math, the writing center which we really want to encourage you all to go to. You are given a certain number of hours that you're allowed to visit the writing center and they give you feedback and it's wonderful and awesome and we really want you to take advantage of this service at Harvard. If you have any problems with your emails or computers you can go ahead and click here. There is career guidance. Please take advantage of that if you're looking for guidance right now. And the library resources which is a particularly important button I'm gonna click on this to show you. It shows you the Hollis, the Harvard online library services and the specific guide for extension students. You all have access to Harvard's amazing library collection and pretty much just about anything you can imagine you want they will get for you. So please learn how to do the Hollis search for information and also become friendly with the librarians there because they're there to support you and to help you find things, right? If you say I'd like to make an appointment with you Jonathan to talk a little bit about my semester project I've been trying to look for information in the certain area. They will definitely help you do that, okay? If you link to the Harvard Extension School Library guide there's a whole lot of other services and information here that will help you. So these guys are amazing. They're here to help you and it just Ask a Librarian webpage sort of gives you some of the Q and A but do visit them because they're there to support your research. If you go down to the next button on this menu goes to the syllabus. So that's the same that's a repeated page of what you found on the homepage. So you'll be able to see the same information that's there. You can scroll down and see the information. But the cool thing about this particular page is that the activities of the class are also listed there. So in case you'd like a quick course summary of all of the things that we're doing and the assignments that you'll have do and at what point that they're due what date and what time that they're due. You can also scroll down there through the syllabus button here, okay? A recent addition to our class is Yellow Dig. Yellow Dig is meant to be like a social media structure where our community shares things with each other that are kind of related to the class but not necessarily 100% related to the class. So things about like attending the Harvard graduation or if there was a conference that came up or if somebody came across a great article that they wanted to share or the whole idea of using Yellow Dig in this structure is to offload the social element of the class and to permit a space to share. Look, there's conferences coming up or there's this great book I'd like to recommend. It's a space where you might not have a natural home for it within our classroom structure but it's something we love because it also just brings together our community. Finally, the last button that you'll have here is a search button in case you're not sure where to find something. I wanna know where announcements are. You click on that and it just gives you a search within the Canvas page, okay? So that is our course. We are so excited to have you here. If you have any questions, you can go to your inbox and send us an email. You can go within the modules and you can post a content or a logistics question to us. You can come to our office hours or you can go back and review the syllabus and make sure the information wasn't already listed somewhere. But do reach out. Let us know how we can support you in your learning in this class. Stay in touch and please ask any questions you might have on your mind right now to make sure that we're all on the same page and can use the design of this class in the best way possible. Looking forward to working with you. Take care.


Hello and welcome to a lecture on Avalanche photodiode, learning outcomes of this session. By the end of this session, student will be able to explain the operation of semiconductor photodiodes with internal gain. Before going to Avalanche photodiode, we have seen in the previous lectures two photodiodes that the first one is p-injection photodiode and second one is pin photodiode. Those both photodiodes were photodiodes without internal gain and today the photodiode which we are going to discuss is Avalanche photodiode and it is having its internal gain. Internal gain means it generates more number of electron hole pair per incident photon. The previously discussed pin photodiode and p-injection photodiode were without internal gains means they just generate or produce a single electron hole pair per incident photon. So let's discuss the Avalanche photodiode which has internal gain. For many years, for optical amplification, photo multiplier tube was a well known solution. Photo multiplier tube has high gain but it has some drawbacks or setbacks. The first is photo multiplier tube is a bulky vacuum tube and it generates heat. Along with generating heat, it provides limited linearity as compared to Avalanche photodiodes. It provides narrow spectral response as well as it has low quantum efficiency of about 25%. So alternative to photo multiplier tube is Avalanche photodiode which is a solid state efficient and effective alternative with internal gain is used. We will see the construction of Avalanche photodiode. It has four layers. One layer is n-type material and the remaining three layers are of p-type material but having different doping levels. The higher heavily doped region is this p-plus region. This p-region is lightly doped while this intrinsic region is also p-layer but it is just like or almost it is intrinsic. Along with this diagram, you can see the electric field distribution across the Avalanche photodiode. The electric field is high at the junction between this n-layer and p-layer. It goes on decreasing in the intrinsic region and n nearly at the end of intrinsic region. The electric field is nearly uniform across this intrinsic region. Here you can see the impact ionization process. So we will first discuss what is impact ionization process. Avalanche photodiodes are always operated under reverse bias. This reverse bias creates a high electric field distribution near this junction between the n-layer and p-layer which goes on decreasing to the p-plus layer. Then the photon with energy higher than band gap energy incident on this n-layer a single electron hole pair is generated. This electron hole pair generated acquires sufficient or much kinetic energy due to this high electric field and it collides with the bound electrons in the covalence band. So creates a secondary electron hole pair. So this creation of secondary electron hole pair is nothing but ionization, impact ionization process which is shown in this diagram. Here you can see the primary generated electron collides with the electron in the valence band and generates a newly electron hole pair. This impact ionization process goes on repeating and create an avalanche process or avalanche effects generating more number of electrons and hole pairs which results in multiplication of photocurrent. When a photon incident on an avalanche photodiode it generates an electron hole pair in this intrinsic region. The electron get drifted towards this n region while holes get drifted towards this p region due to the presence of this uniform electric field across this intrinsic region. When the electron get drifted towards n and it reaches in this p-layer it experiences a high electric field which is shown here and it acquires a kinetic energy and it collides with the bound electron in the valence band to produce another electron hole pair. So this impact ionization process goes on multiplicating and produce a larger photocurrent. This multiplication of carrier generation process is known as gain process. So this high electric field region is named as gain region while this intrinsic region is named as absorption region. Whenever due to this application of high reverse field the depletion layer or the depletion region at this junction widens. Hence this avalanche photodiode is also referred as reach through avalanche photodiode multiplication factor. Let us see the multiplication factor. The multiplication factor M is a major of internal gain provided by the avalanche photodiode. It is defined as the ratio of multiplied output photocurrent to the initial or primary unmultiplied photocurrent which is given by I output by I photocurrent. It is a unit less quantity. You may pause here the video and try to answer this question. Why the speed of avalanche photodiode is less than pin photodiode? The obvious answer to this question is the speed of avalanche photodiode is slower than pin photodiode because of multiplicative process of generation of electron hole pairs which is due to impact ionization process which contributes to larger photocurrent making the quantum efficiency high. But there is a tradeoff between the quantum efficiency and the speed or the response time of the avalanche photodiode. We will see which factors affect the speed of avalanche photodiode. The first factor which affects the avalanche photodiode is the time it takes for photogenerated electrons to cross the absorption region to the multiplication region. The second factor which affects the speed of avalanche photodiode is the time it takes for the avalanche process through impact ionization process to build up in the p region and generate the electron hole pairs. The last factor which affect is the time it takes for the last hole released in the avalanche process to transit through the intrinsic region. We will see the drawbacks of avalanche photodiode. The fabrication cost is high due to the complex structure at the time of manufacturing. The avalanche multiplication process is a statistical process and hence it leads to the carrier generation fluctuations which leads to the excess noise in the photocurrent which is undesired. Avalanche photodiode are operated under high reverse bias voltage of around 50 to 400 volts. The gain or the multiplication factor is a temperature dependent and hence temperature compensation is necessary for the stable operation of the devices and these are the sum of the drawbacks of avalanche photodiode. These are the references used. Thank you.