General information

2023 M.F.A. Alumni

Student Profile

Niloufar Abdolmaleki
MFA Design, UC Davis

Niloufar Abdolmaleki is an artist and designer and is currently pursuing her MFA in Design at University of California, Davis. Her research interests include the experiential and environmental graphic design. She is interested in creating social interventions and  public arts and sparking human interactions. She greatly enjoys working on multidisciplinary projects, the ones that involve creative thinking and visualization strategies.

Student Profile

Hafsa Akter
MFA Design, UC Davis

Hafsa is an M.F.A. in Design student at the University of California, Davis. Her interest is in fashion design. She worked on sustainable design to create zero-waste patterns, upcycling garments, and exploring ethnic clothing to design contemporary fashion.

In her M.F.A thesis, she is planning to expand her research on functional apparel and 3D printing.

Student Profile

Diana Valeria Araiza Soto
MFA Design, UC Davis

Architect from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara with a Master Degree in Architecture, Building and Sustainable Planning 

I work as a professor in the UAG focused on fields like Sustainability, Urban Planning, History, Workshops and Theory of Design.

I’m planning to focus my thesis in the study of lighting in commercial buildings 

Student Profile

Cristina Gomez
MFA Design, UC Davis

Cristina (Cris) Gomez is an M.F.A. Design student at the University of California, Davis. Her academic background includes Literature, Cinema, and Fashion studies of 1930s America. 

Cristina’s area of focus is on costume exhibitions and on the analysis of clothing’s social role. Her planned thesis project is an exhibition on the Central Valley of California’s field workers’ clothing to discuss their working social conditions. 

Student Profile

Justin Marsh
MFA Design, UC Davis

Justin Marsh is a visual artist and designer with an expansive history as an exhibition specialist. Over the past decade, he has supported the inauguration and growth of multiple museum institutions and gallery cooperatives in Northern California. His practice at UC Davis intersects interior and exterior spaces of cultural production, seeking to embrace marginal, liminal, and heterotopic territory. His research is informed by critical design, counter-archival methods, and emerging exhibition and urban design strategies.

Student Profile

Alejandra Ruiz
MFA Design, UC Davis

As a designer, Alejandra has been interested in exploring, performing and reflecting on alternative practices that can derive from her academic background. This has led her to collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to propose and experiment in projects related to sustainability and circular economy, development of alternative materials, education and learning, geosciences communication, craft-art-design interaction, collaborative arts and creative activism.

During the MFA she will be exploring material design, its lifecycles and possible applications.

Student Profile

Quinessa Stibbins
MFA Design, UC Davis

Quinessa Stibbins is an apparel designer and dancer from St. Paul Minnesota. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BS in Apparel Design and a minor in social justice. She then worked for a dance costume company called Kelle Company for two years. Quinessa is passionate about designing through a social justice lens and using both apparel and dance for storytelling. 

Student Profile

Pachia Lucy Vang
MFA Design, UC Davis

Pachia’s (Puh-chee-uh) design work is informed by her experiences as a Hmong-American navigating culture, art, trauma, and society with a pluriversal imagination that speaks from Hmong-centered knowledge. She is a paj ntaub maker exploring concepts of indigeneity, diaspora, and dress through an interdisciplinary practice in textiles, fashion, digital media, and exhibition design to create place and space for marginalized communities.

Student Profile

Ofelia Viloche Pulido
MFA Design, UC Davis

Ofelia is an M.F.A. in Design student at the University of California, Davis. Her background includes architecture, landscaping, furniture, and digital fabrication. Her area of interest is focused on sustainable design and interactive design, in pursuit of creating a merge between nature and technology.

Student Profile

Marcy Wacker
MFA Design, UC Davis

With more than 25 years of professional practice and 15 years of teaching, Marcy returned to UC Davis to explore design’s “gaps”—overlooked, avoided, and ignored spaces. Her work acknowledges and amplifies forgotten objects, people, and ideas, investigates how they reveal and influence our human experience, and reimagines how we teach design and why. Her current research focuses on creating design teaching resources with and for educators and students.

Student Profile

Iris Xie
MFA Design, UC Davis

Student Profile

Cigdem “Rova” Yilmaz
MFA Design, UC Davis

Rova Yilmaz is a designer interested in smart clothing and functional clothing design. She studied fashion design and civil engineering as an undergraduate. She prospects to combine design, engineering, and art. Her research is biased toward actuated clothes with functionality and purpose for being smart.

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