CATS+ Computer Club

Resident Bios

Itai Almor

Itai Almor is an illustrator and an educator who recently published their first kids book! Find Sasha and the City of Whispers online, or ask your favorite bookstore to order you a copy! It’s an imaginative, artsy, cli-fi romp for the kids. Itai received a BA in Computing & the Arts from Yale university in 2020, and they’re currently completing an AmeriCorps service year in school social work with Communities in Schools. As a first generation American and queer person, they make art that explores the beautiful and the intimate entangled in monstrosity and the intergenerational longing for home. They love to cook, to draw, and whistle while driving on a sunny day.

Jesse Cline

Jesse Cline is a designer, artist, and educator interested in contemporary systems of representation and production. Through appropriation and subversion, Jesse explores the ways that objects and images embody meaning and transmit information, and the ways we define ourselves using these signifiers. Jesse is a co-founder of Partial Shade, a nomadic curatorial project dedicated to exhibiting artwork in nontraditional spaces. They earned a BS in Electronic Media, Art and Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2011, an MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016, and currently teaches communication design at Texas State University.

Kellyn Dassler

Kellyn Dassler is a software developer and creative technologist interested in co-creation and deconstruction of technology and code as methods of exploration and critical lenses for creating more ethical, playful technology. She is particularly interested in natural user interfaces, creative and human-centered AI, feminist technoscience, and augmented reality and explored these spaces through research at Carnegie Mellon University’s HCII and Colorado State University’s NUI Lab, as well as human centered design prototyping, art installations and software development through CIID, NASA Colorado Space Grant, and her current employer, frog design. She most recently exhibited an online code poetry piece via the School for Poetic Computation’s showcase in 2022 and a future-focused interactive tech installation at frog’s SXSW PoP event in 2023. As a volunteer, she serves as a mentor and educator through Girls Who Code, Code Chicas, and a variety of hackathons for underrepresented students in design and tech. Originally from Colorado, she earned a BS in Computer Science with a focus on Human Computer Interaction as a Boettcher Scholar, and she still loves to hike, rock climb, hammock, and vibe in Austin’s nature while listening to indie music in her free time.

Sam Mayer

Sam Mayer is a playwright and performance maker from Houston. Full length works include POOLBOY00 (Beaubourg, Co-Lab Projects, Crashbox, UTNT) , THE CUCK (Intramural Theater), and CHET'S SUMMER VACATION (Kennedy Center; Intramural Theater; Rec Room Arts). His work has been developed with The Orchard Project, The Workshop Theater, The Mastheads, SVT/Grackle Jack, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. He is the recipient of the Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation Prize and a fellowship from the Michener Center for Writers. MFA: UT Austin.


Sara Aleyce Roma

Sara Aleyce Roma is an ATX based new media artist, animator and occasional curator and facilitator. A Motion Design graduate from SCAD, they have a particular interest in time-based works involving animation, video, interaction, and performance. Most recently in their short film “A Problem” they explored stop-motion as endurance performance in efforts to exhaust the meaning of a single object. From learning HTML on neopets and studying experimental animation, to diving into VJing, ecophilosophy, and phenomenology; they pull inspiration from a variety of fields and subcultures. A strong believer in “bad art”, process, and experience as art.

Serena Zam

Serena Zam is an artist and technologist based in Austin, TX. She makes paintings, collages, and tech-based art to explore how technology and internet culture shape people and their rituals. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and shares her life with her dog, Darcy, and cat, Bennet.