Dana Karwas

Dana Karwas is the Director of the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) at Yale. She holds a PhD in Urban Systems from NYU’s School of Engineering, an MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas.

Her teaching focuses on mechanized perception and designing for both terrestrial and celestial spaces. At CCAM, she runs the Ultra Space Lab, leads the Maquette Publication, fosters interdisciplinary collaborations with faculty and students, and curates shows for the CCAM ISOVIST Gallery.

Dana Karwas’ practice dismantles perception and reconstructs it in unexpected ways. She blends architecture, cognition, and logic, pushing past familiarity into the uncanny. Her work explores the reorientation of knowledge, making the familiar feel offset and the unknown feel inevitable. Whether through sculpture, digital imagery, 3D printing, glass casting, painting, or architectural interventions, her work operates at a shifting edge—where materials, space, and experience become tools for revealing hidden structures of thought.

She was formerly the Media Director of Maya Lin’s fifth and final memorial, What is Missing? Before joining the Yale community, she was an Industry Assistant Professor at NYU Engineering in the Integrated Design Media program. Karwas’ work has been exhibited at Spill 180, ISOVIST Gallery, Artspace, Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, The Helix Center, Exit Art, Karkula Gallery, Federation Gallery, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Boston Museum of Science, and the Chelsea Art Museum. Her writing has been featured in Maquette and Perspecta.