Simon Charwey
“I am Simon Charwey, a graduate from the Yale School of Art, MFA Graphic Design program, May 2024. I am a Ghanaian (African) type designer and the founder of African Design Matters directory initiative. I am interested in the knowledge-based economy where I see myself playing a critical role in contributing to the growth of literacy and literature. This includes the design and implementation of fonts and keyboards for African writing systems, the documentation and transcription of ancient manuscripts, proposing what is needed for support in technology for both Latin and non-Latin scripts, and ensuring these processes are inclusive enough –– including African and BIPOC designers, and institutions in those Digitally Disadvantaged Language (DDL) communities in Africa.
Currently, I am documenting, designing and developing a unique typeface and font with complete glyph extensions that support all the phonological awareness among native speakers of the seven Dañgme ethnic groups in Ghana.
I am interested in possible collaboration on projects that support coverage of the click characters in commonly used fonts (e.g. !Xóõ). Also, coverage of Ajami or extended Arabic characters is needed for some West African languages in fonts that have a regular Arabic complement.”
Milind Agarwal
“Milind Agarwal is a third-year PhD student in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) group at George Mason University near Washington, DC. Since joining George Mason, he has worked with his advisor, Prof. Antonios Anastasopoulos, on several research problems surrounding digitally disadvantaged languages around the world such as optical character recognition, language identification, and scalable resource creation. During his PhD, he has completed several projects on American and Indian low-resource languages, which have gone on to win research awards. Ultimately, all his work focuses on making language technologies more accessible, robust, and useful for language communities. His work has been recognized with several scholarships and awards, and has resulted in publications at top-tier computer science venues. Before joining Mason, he completed his BS and MSE degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Johns Hopkins University, where he conducted research on dialogue systems, low-resource NLP, and computational healthcare.”
Sina Ahmadi
“Dr. Sina Ahmadi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Linguistics department at the University of Zurich. His research focuses on leveraging language technology for languages with limited digital resources, adapting current natural language processing approaches to support under-resourced languages. Previously, he pursued similar research in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University. Sina earned his Ph.D. in 2022 from the School of Computer Science at the University of Galway, Ireland.”
Kateryna Korolevtseva
“Kateryna Korolevtseva is an independent type designer, brand designer, and art director from Ukraine. With a background in management and creative strategies, Kateryna is passionate about meaningful projects with a deep focus on typography. She specializes in Cyrillic and Latin scripts and enjoys researching and rethinking Ukrainian type design heritage in a modern context. Currently, Kateryna is enhancing her professional skills by studying at the EsadType postgraduate and master’s programs in Amiens.
Kateryna is a speaker at type design conferences (e.g., TypeLab 2022, ATypI Paris 2023, Typographics 2023) and an author of articles for Design Week, Alphabettes, and other publications. She is the recipient of two Red Dot Design Awards and the TDC70 Award of Typographic Excellence (2024), and a judge of the TDC69 competition by the Type Directors Club (2023) and the Young Guns competition (2024). .
By sharing her knowledge about Ukrainian design, culture, and typographic heritage, Kateryna strives to position Ukraine prominently in the type design industry.”
Kourosh Beigpour
“Kourosh Beigpour, a Kurdish-born Iranian-American artist based in Los Angeles, is an award-winning graphic artist/designer whose works have been published in more than twenty countries. His prolific portfolio, which merges contemporary and traditional design, has been featured in numerous editorials and interviews. He holds an MFA in International Contemporary Art and Design from Limkokwing University. In 2011, he moved to the United States and established K-B Studio, to focus on type design and typography. Over the past few decades, Kourosh has designed for a wide range of clients, including Google, the Broad, Getty, and Powerhouse museums, as well as Canada Type and various universities and cultural/educational institutions like UCI, UCLA, Stanford, NEIU, and OSU.”