Rama Hoetzlein enjoys finding creative and innovative solutions to data visualization that democratize public access to knowledge. Rama is a media artist and engineer whose work covers creative and technical ways to explore information systems. Rama was born and raised in Ithaca and enjoys the regional environment through hiking, biking and sailing. Rama currently resides the the SF Bay Area while visiting Ithaca every summer. He received dual BA Computer Science and BFA Fine Arts degrees from Cornell University in 2004, and M.S. and Ph.D degrees in the Media Arts and Technology program at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2010. Rama has engaged in the Digital Humanities through the Transliteracies program at UCSB, and enjoys exploring the human side of computing.