Hello, Friend!
Welcome, and thank you for your interest in my work.
Akai Creative is Mithra (Lee) Vankipuram. I am a computer scientist and user-experience researcher with 10+ years of business experience. I am currently based in Portland, Oregon.
I have acquired a broad range of skills by delivering on multiple projects spanning a diverse portfolio of work. On this website, you will find details about my projects and the many lessons I have learned. My work portfolio and unique career trajectory reflect my curiosity, solutions-oriented mindset, and readiness to take on any challenge.
Let’s work together.
Education
PhD Biomedical Informatics, Arizona State University (2012)
MS Computer Science, Arizona State University (2008)
BS Computer Science and Engineering (2006)
Academic Research
Labs: Arts Media and Engineering (AME), Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC), Haptics Lab, Human Machine Symbiosis Lab
Institution Partners: Nursing Innovation, Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, James S McDonnell Foundation
Work History
Akai Creative, Research Consulting, 2021 - 2024
Provided research, product development, marketing, and data sciences services as an individual contributor and business owner.
Clients: Early Stage Start-Ups, Enosis VR, Presidio Theater, Willamette Week
Innovate for Health, 2020 - 2021
Collaborators: University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS), UC Berkeley, and Johnson and Johnson
HP Labs, HP Inc, 2012 - 2020
Teams: Analytics Lab, Visualization Lab, Immersive Experiences Lab (IXL), Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Compute Lab (AIECL)
Business Partners: Print, Personal Computing, Supply Chain & HR
My Skills
General Expertise
Human-computer interaction
User experience (UX) research
Data Science
Extended reality (AR/VR) technologies
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) Product Development
Healthcare Applications
Wearables and Print experiences
Retail Analytics
Big Data Visualization
Patenting
Policy Management with IRB / FDA
Product Roadmap and Strategy
Stakeholder analysis
Customer engagement
Research Methods
Contextual inquiry
Ethnography
Cafe & Diary Studies
Wizard of Oz Experiments
Interviews
Prototype & Pilot Evaluation
Expert Review
Usability Testing
Scenario Testing
A/B Testing
Control/Intervention Studies
Remote Testing
Technology Benchmarking
Mixed-Methods Experimental Design
Behavioral & Statistical Data Analysis
Developer Tools
Python
C#
MATLAB
Paper prototyping
User Storyboard Sketching
Adobe Creative Suite
Camtasia
Unity
iOS and Arduino programming
Agile product development (SCRUM)
Atlassian toolkit (Asana, JIRA)