nkenge wheatland

First of all, my name is pronounced En-ken-jee... and my nickname is Kenny :D

I was born in New York City and was raised in Columbia, Maryland. I went to school for my entire life in Baltimore. For middle school and upper school, I attended Roland Park Country School (RPCS), an all-girls school in North Baltimore. It was at RPCS that I fell in love with theatre and that turned into a love in general of pop culture. In my junior year of high school, I did a year abroad in Lac-Megantic, Quebec and attended Polyvalente Montignac, a French speaking school. As a result, I speak French with an awful Canadian accent. :P I graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where I was a major in Computer Science and a minor in both Math and Theatre. At UMBC, I was also a Meyerhoff Scholar. I absolutely loved UMBC and I am somewhat sad to be away from my friends and family on the east coast, but I am also excited to be at UCR doing this work.

My love of theatre and lighting design has allowed me to see many many Broadway shows and work for many professional theatre companies, the most prolific being the Williamstown Theatre Festival, a summer stock company that produces Broadway caliber plays with some of the best and most celebrated in the business. Working at Williamstown was one of the greatest experiences of my life (and one of the most physically exhausting). I have also worked as an electrician around Baltimore at places such as Center Stage and Toby's Dinner Theatre. In college, I was able to be a lighting designer for a school musical and I was able to go back to RPCS and be a designer for a series of one-act plays.

My interest in animation began in college after I did a summer of research in a Maya animation lab. I have not turned back since that day. I have participated in two REUs, one at the University of Southern California in 2007 and another for Pixar Animaiton Studios at UCLA in 2008. Information about the research that I did can be found in the research section.

As I said before, I am a pop culture junky. I happen to know a lot of random facts, most of which are about pop culture. This is because I like to watch a lot tv and movies both old and new. I also listen to/play (cello & guitar) most types of music (disco is my fave). I also love to read pretty much anything: books, The New York Times, and fashion magazines top the list. I even played on a winning trivia team at my college. As a result, I am really really good at game shows. I am currently trying to set up an audition for Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Last but not least, I love to travel. I have been to more than 1/2 of the United States and about 13 different countries in total. When I travel, I love taking pictures. This past summer I presented my research at the Symposium for Computer Animation in Madrid, Spain. It is really exciting that the work I do here is allowing me to travel.