David Gersten is an internationally recognized artist, architect, writer and educator based in New York City. He is the Director of Interdisciplinary Learning at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, where he has been a Professor, since 1991. At The Cooper Union, he has served as the Associate Dean of the School of Architecture, under Founding Dean John Hejduk, as well as, Acting Dean of the school. Gersten is the founding Director and President of: Arts Letters & Numbers, a non-profit arts and education organization dedicated to expanding the experiences understood as education through creating new structures and spaces for creative exchange across a wide range of disciplines including: Architecture, Visual Arts, Theater Arts, Film, Music, the Humanities, the Sciences and Social Sciences. Arts, Letters & Numbers conducts workshops in educational and cultural institutions worldwide, while operating an ongoing series of programs: workshops, sessions, residencies, thesis programs, lectures, theater performances, exhibitions, events, music performances and films productions at its campus located in Averill Park, NY.

Gersten regularly collaborates with and advises international organizations, educational and cultural institutions, as well as, education policy groups on a wide range of subjects, including: art / science / humanities collaborations and the future of education. He recently presented a keynote address entitled ‘Unlocking the Creativity of Youth’ at the UNICEF – EXPO, as well as, at the Chancellors Summit held at CAFA in Beijing.

Gersten’s works include: buildings, drawings, stories, essays, films, performances and constructions. His works have appeared in numerous international exhibitions and performance spaces and are held in the collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture, the New York City Public Library’s print collection and many private collections. He has published extensively in national and international publications on diverse areas of research including: The spaces and structures of education, emergent disciplinary geographies, spatial literacy, ethics and technology, market functionality and collective judgment, global resource distribution and the poetic / material / spatial imagination, the city and its transformations, and the linkages between: embodied experience, embodied cognition, memory, perception, language, space and education.

He has exhibited, lectured and served as a visiting professor at numerous universities throughout the world. In addition to serving as President / Director of Arts Letters & Numbers, he is currently: the Director of Interdisciplinary learning and professor at the Cooper Union, a visiting professor at Rhode Island School of Design, an International Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, in Beijing, China, a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in the UK and a member of the Board of Directors of Big Picture Learning.

Gersten is a graduate of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. He has also pursued studies in phenomenology at the New School for Social Research as well as Islamic Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Steve Lawrence comes from a diverse background of craftsmanship, arts, academia and spiritualism. Originally from upstate New York, he owned and operated his own plumbing and heating company until he began international teaching at the age of 31. He taught abroad at various International Baccalaureate programs at schools in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and China. As an educator he worked with collaborators in the development of a range of curricular and extracurricular programs that sought to foster growth in the ‘whole person.’ Within the classroom he taught subjects in the humanities and language arts, but eventually his affinity with the study and teaching of the mind and spirit drew him towards psychology - which he is now studying within the doctoral program at Saybrook University with a focus in transpersonalism. In his early years Steve grew fond of meditative philosophies and found a homogenous fit in both his personal life and within teaching and learning. His One-Pointed Mind workshops for students and educators have been presented in eight countries in both academic and professional institutions.

Now at ALN, Steve is excited to start a new chapter of teaching and learning. He looks forward to connecting with the people and organisations within the ALN network to foster collaborations and grow the unique opportunity that ALN is to so many. Boundless potentialities await us!

Adrianos Efthymiadis is a 25 year-old artist and researcher from Athens, Greece. He attended The Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture in New York from the year 2015 to 2017, when he decided to discontinue his studies and move back to Greece where, for the next three years, he concentrated on the study of philosophy (phenomenology) and theology under philosopher Stephanos Rosanis. He considers himself a highly un-trained clown of many disciplines, a jack of no trade, a jester of an ever-dying circus of the street.

In the past years, Adrianos has been working primarily as an artist, having participated in both solo and group shows (i.e. 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021 Art Athina Virtua etc.) as well as a research assistant and guest lecturer in venues/institutions (such as İstanbul’s Bilgi Üniversitesi, Politecnico di Torino, the Latvian (Riga) Academy of Music’s conference on Artistic Research and others).

Over the past year Adrianos also acted as Associate Curator and Project Manager at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale’s CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion for Arts Letters & Numbers’ exhibition titled “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible.”

Melike Ahsen Beleli (b.1995) is an artist and designer based in New York and Istanbul. In 2020, she launched Leke Studio, a brand of multi-purpose interior design pieces inspired by the spirit of Istanbul. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art at Marmara University in Istanbul, where she majored in photography. As a multi-disciplinary artist, Melike practices photography, sound, video, and installation using old printing methods. Her focus on displacement, identity, migration, and belonging influence her interest in energy transformation, which she explores through touch, distortion, and play of temporal and experimental works. She is currently working on a series of experimental 3D projects.

CW stayed on as resident artist and shop steward after an immersive residency in 2021. He lives in Columbia County and works in Green Island NY as Director of Engineering at Ecovative Design, a mushroom mycelium technology company. With ALN along the route of his daily commute, he can often be found onsite maintaining the woodshop or working on his studio sculpture practice. CW has a BFA in Sculpture & Drawing from SUNY Purchase, and a BS in Chemical & Biological Engineering from RPI, where he earned the Coonley Price for excellence in process design thesis.

Dewen Ju is a multidisciplinary artist now primarily working on ceramics in Jing De Zhen, China. In the past years, Dewen had been working primarily as an architect and painter before he decided to go with the flow. Dewen has a BS in Architecture from ASU, and a MArch in Architecture from RISD. He worked on the design of Community Musicworks and a few residential projects during his time in 3SIX0 Architecture. He has been helping with the construction of Arts Letters & Numbers since 2020.