We welcome the 2026-2027 Design Research Fellows, Borami Kang and Narges Sedaghat. As research fellows, they will facilitate the programming of Design Incubation’s activities, including the colloquia, awards competition, and the inaugural Design Incubation curated exhibitions. Watch for the announcements and calls-for-participation in the coming weeks.
Borami Kang
Ohio State University
Post Graduate Research Fellow
Borami Kang is a recent MFA graduate in Design Research and Development from The Ohio State University, where she also served as a Graduate Teaching Associate in communication design. With over two decades of professional experience in visual communication design, including brand identity design and UX/UI design, creative direction, and project management, she integrates industry practice, design education, and critical research.
Her research explores the intersection of design education and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on creative agency, authorship, and decision-making in AI-assisted design processes. Through qualitative and participatory research, she examines how emerging designers negotiate roles, responsibility, and control when working with generative AI. Her work also considers broader cultural implications of AI in visual communication, including bias, homogenization, and inclusivity.
Having recently relocated to New Jersey, Borami is currently exploring opportunities to contribute to research, teaching, and design communities while continuing to develop pedagogical frameworks and ethical approaches for reflective, responsible, and inclusive AI-integrated design practices.
Narges Sedaghat
East Carolina University
Graduate Research Fellow
Narges Sedaghat is a graphic designer, researcher, and educator currently pursuing an MFA in Graphic Design at East Carolina University. Her research explores belonging, perception, and meaning-making through typography, embodied experience, and emerging technologies. Working across experimental typography, interactive systems, creative coding, and installation, she investigates how relationships among the body, language, space, and visibility shape the experience and interpretation of meaning.
Her practice combines design research with material and computational experimentation, using typography as a spatial, interactive, and participatory medium. Her work has been presented through exhibitions, conferences, and interdisciplinary academic contexts. She is particularly interested in critically examining how emerging technologies, including AI, influence communication, interpretation, and meaning, while maintaining human agency at the center of the creative process. Alongside her research and studio practice, Sedaghat teaches graphic design and develops participatory approaches to design education that encourage experimentation, critical thinking, and active engagement.