Pamela L. Jennings, Ph.D., MBA

Pamela L. Jennings, Ph.D., MBA

Business: CONSTRUKTS, Inc

Pamela L. Jennings, PhD, MBA, CEO of CONSTRUKTS, Inc, is recognized as a thought leader for integrative research, learning, and entrepreneurship bridging the Arts and Technology in higher education, federal funding agencies, and start-up initiatives. Following her position as the first professor with a joint appointment between the Visual Arts and Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University she served as a National Science Foundation Program Director for the CreativeIT and Human Centered Computing. She has participated in National Academies of Sciences (NAS) initiatives including curating the exhibition Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary: shared visions between art and technology, and NAS committee member the report, Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree. 

As an emerging digital artist in the 1990’s, Pamela leveraged a unique set of opportunities that embedded her into some of the foremost research think-tanks and media companies exploring new interactive content platforms including Time Warner, NBC, IBM Research, and SRI International. Pamela was recruited by IBM to lead the alphaWorks.IBM a team that developed a web portal connecting IBM software research to external developers and customers. While at IBM, she worked in an IBM research lab focused on human centered computing. There she designed education technology prototypes for K-12 STEM learning and speech technologies. Pamela is a MacDowell Fellow. Her creative works are discussed in the books Creating Their Own Image: The History of African American Women Artists, Struggles for Representation: African American Film/Video/New Media Makers, and Sisters in the Life.

CONSTRUKTS, Inc. is developing a mixed-reality platform for learning that combines physical Smart-Blok construktions with virtual 3D models. The models are analyzed to reveal structural features that can help learners understand concepts in mathematics, engineering, and design.

CONSTRUKTS supports a design-learning framework that is based on three pillars: Building physical artifacts and prototypes; Exploration into how things are made; and Synthesis of newly garnered insights into increasingly more sophisticated design ideas. The CONSTRUKTS platform is built on a proprietary wireless Internet of Things (IoT) technology that processes wireless sensor network messages through an advanced analysis engine for virtual 3D model output in a variety of devices from desktop computers to the Microsoft HoloLens®. CONSTRUKTS has been supported by the National Science Foundation and partnered with the Microsoft HoloLens® for Academic Research initiative, Wolfram Research, and the Highway1.io Hardware Start-up Incubator (a PCH International Company).

The CONSTRUKTS’ team of software and electrical engineers and product designers believes there are immense opportunities and responsibilities for developers at the frontline of innovation to challenge and change the status-quo of how information technologies are developed and integrated into the world.

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