About

A collectivistic understanding of an individualistic world

Born in Cebu, Philippines, John moved to the United States when he was 10 years old. A combination of code-switching and a deep interest in observing people lead him to pursue a degree in Psychology and Mathematics. However, after specializing in one discipline, he realized that real world change can be done faster and more efficient if we communicated more between fields. With this knowledge, John works and creates teams that from multiple different perspectives to create methods and projects that answers problems more holistically.

John received his B.S. in Social Psychology with a minor in Mathematics with Honors at the University of California, San Diego. He just finished his M.S. in Computational Media from University of California, Santa Cruz. His research interests are focused on using intersections between the fields of social sciences, engineering, and the Arts/Humanities to answer questions about gaming, technology, and the communities created by it. His primary research goals are to bring together interdisciplinary groups to solve social problems regarding tech literacy ranging from understanding internet cookies to parsing out fake news and misinformation. He finished a final demo for, CookieMania, an interactive serious game designed to teach high school/college students about internet cookies and its social implications as well as conducting experiments on how people fall for fake news online. John’s past research work in undergrad has been in moral development, learning through online media, conformity online, and gamer aggression.

Currently, John is a UX Researcher at Johnson and Johnson Robotics, supporting them in the online systems with their bronchoscopy robot. John’s hobbies involve playing clarinet, singing, tabletop games, D&D, competitive video games, RPG games, and most importantly sleeping.