News
**Apply to our workshop at DIS ’26 (6/13 in Singapore) by 5/15 to explore Non-western relational worldviews on more-than-human entanglements**
**Apply to our Spatial STS Fieldschool (8/4-8/7 in Atlanta) by 5/5 to develop critical and creative scholarship around space and place**
6/2026: My latest installation (Rest against the Machine) is on exhibit at the Soft Systems: Memory & Care exhibition at the Ferst Center from 6/2-6/15!
4/2026: Toxic Speculations is presented at CHI in Barcelona
2/2026: Started new position at the School of Interactive Computing!
10/2025: I defended my dissertation Feeling Environmental Entanglements: A Crip Posthuman Approach on Designing within Precarious Worlds!!
10/2025: Reflexive Data Walks is presented at CSCW 2025 virtually
9/2025: Toxic Speculations won an honorable mention at the 4S Conference!
Hello!
I am a designer, design researcher, and currently a research scientist in the Ka Moamoa Lab and ESCape Lab at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing.
I recently completed my PhD at Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program as a member of the Interdisciplinary Media Arts Center, the Future Feelings Lab, and the Design and Social Justice Studio.
I do research in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). My work combines humanistic scholarship with tangible interaction design to explore body-environment relationships through data. My dissertation examines how disability theory and chronic illness experiences can expand how we understand and relate to the environment, and reimagine approaches to designing for sustainability.
Prior to Georgia Tech, I studied and practiced Landscape Architecture for many years in Wisconsin and Washington State, focusing on sustainable urban design and accessibility in the built environment. I also worked as a design researcher, translator, and free-lance visual designer in Taipei, Taiwan.
Selected Works in Digital Media
Supporting the Experience of Place for People with Chronic Illness
Selected Works in Landscape & Urban Design
Urban Alleyway Activation
Community Building through A Native Medicinal Garden
Stormwater Managemetnt and Ecological Restoration in PDRT Campus Master Plan
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
(with Saiki Design)
Selected Publications
For a comprehensive list of my publications, please see my Google Scholar.
Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers
Sylvia Janicki, Heidi Biggs, Noura Howell. 2026. Toxic Speculations: A Crip Posthuman Fabulation of Living in A Permanently Polluted World. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26). https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790454.
Sylvia Janicki, Julio De Pereda Banda, Lisette Romero, Sarah Harris, Xuanyu Guo, Noura Howell, and Abigale Stangl. 2025. Designing for Rest: Rethinking Access for/from Chronic Illness. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’25). https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3716241
Sylvia Janicki, Nassim Parvin, and Noura Howell. 2024. Crip Reflections on Designing with Plants: Intersecting Disability Theory, Chronic Illness, and More-than-Human Design. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661509 *Best Paper Award.
Sylvia Janicki, Alexandra Riggs, Noura Howell, Anne Sullivan and Abigale Stangl. 2024. Queering / Cripping Technologies of Productivity. In Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3644067
Sylvia Janicki, Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, Noura Howell, Anne Sullivan, and Nassim Parvin. 2024. Sensing Bodies: Engaging Postcolonial Histories through More-than-Human Interactions. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3633389
Sylvia Janicki, Matt Ziegler, and Jennifer Mankoff. 2021. Navigating Illness, Finding Place: Enhancing the Experience of Place for People with Chronic Illness. ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS ’21). https://doi.org/10/1145/3460112.3471955
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Sylvia Janicki, Shubhangi Gupta, and Nassim Parvin. 2025. Reflexive Data Walks: Cultivating Feminist Ethos through Place-Based Inquiry. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 2, Article CSCW156 (May 2025). https://doi.org/10.1145/3711054
Lorraine Johnson, Mira Shapiro, Sylvia Janicki, Jennifer Mankoff, Rafael B. Stricker. 2023. Does Biological Sex Matter in Lyme Disease? The Need for Sex-Disaggregated Data in Persistent Illness. Int J Gen Med. 2023;16:2557-2571
https://doi.org/10.2147/IJGM.S406466
Yen-Fu Chen and Sylvia Janicki. 2020. A Cognitive-Based Board Game With Augmented Reality for Older Adults: Development and Usability Study. JMIR Serious Games. 8(4):e22007. doi: 10.2196/22007. PMID: 33315015; PMCID: PMC7769693. Available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315015
SYLVIA H JANICKI 