Please join Tisch Creative Research in congratulating Tisch faculty members Ian Harnarine, Giada Matteini, Shindy Melanie Johnson and Scott Miller on their successful applications to the 2024-2025 Tisch Mega Grants Incubator! Chosen by a peer review panel, this faculty cohort will spend the next two years transforming their ambitious ideas into competitive funding proposals for impactful, large-scale research projects appropriate for six and seven-figure external funding opportunities. Read on for more information about the cohort members and their project ideas!
Ian Harnarine
Ian Harnarine was born in Toronto to parents from Trinidad. He has earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics along with an MFA in filmmaking. His films have won awards around the world, while his work for television has garnered an Emmy nomination. He is an Assistant Arts Professor in Undergraduate Film & TV at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Ian's Mega Grants Incubator project, Artist/Scientist, is a long term documentary that attempts to understand how modern science is conducted, how someone becomes a scientist and what life as a modern scientist looks like. The process of production will have filmmakers and subjects engaging with each other's work.
Giada Matteini
Giada Matteini (she/they) is an Italian performer, educator, researcher, choreographer, and cultural producer based in New York City. She is the Founder and Director of WADE, a women-led multifaceted performing arts company working at the intersection with social justice and holds a full time position as an Assistant Arts Professor in the Department of Dance at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Giada's Mega Grants Incubator Project, SOMATIC REHABILITATION PROGRAM FOR VIOLENT OFFENDERS, intersects clinical studies, sociology, anthropology, forensic psychology, and social policy with the creative arts and investigates ways to innovate the current model of gender-based prevention & advancement using somatic modalities.
Shindy Melanie Johnson
Shindy Melanie Johnson is an Adjunct Faculty and Postdoc Fellow (Production Mentor) in the Tisch-ITP program at New York University. She is the co-creator of The COVID-19 Impact Project - a student-involved research project which aims to be the leading data storyteller of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on research by the American Association of Pediatrics, Shindy's Mega Grants Incubator endeavor, The COVID Orphan Listening Project, will be a care-centric vehicle for children and youth who lost a primary caregiver to COVID-19, to remember their loved ones and heal through storytelling.
Scott Miller
Scott Miller has spent forty years as a coach, trainer and teacher. His diverse life paths include two sports at the professional level, a law degree from George Washington University, clerking at DC’s Public Defender Service, time as a producer, actor, director, a trainer of lead teachers, husband, father of three and training in counseling and holistic practices. He has been, for the last fifteen years, a Professor at NYU Tisch’s Graduate Acting Program.
Scott’s Mega Grants Incubator project, Bridging a Communication Gap Between Doctors and Patients, will research the use of the Miller Voice Method in medical settings to innovate the way doctors and nurses communicate with patients and, by extension, with each other to improve patient care outcomes.