Fellows
Christina Agapakis
Christina Agapakis is a synthetic biologist interested in the structure, evolution and design of the microbial communities that help us to produce and digest our food. Her research is collaborative and multidisciplinary, working with engineers, artists, and designers and ranging from the ecology of soil to skin to cheese. Her blog, Oscillator (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/oscillator), is hosted by Scientific American.
Clarissa Ribeiro (Brazil)
http://www.clarissaribeiro.com/
Clarissa Ribeiro, Ph.D. in Arts, M.Arch, B.Arch, former Fulbright Scholar in Arts and Science, LASER talks’ chair in Brazil. With an interest in generative strategies in nature and in the algorithmic realm of computers, Clarissa Ribeiro explores form, effectiveness and consciousness as emergent phenomena in the most diverse systems and scales in both media arts and architecture. In her artistic practice and teaching, she navigates the universes of morphogenetic design in dialogue with robotics and digital fabrication, visual/media arts in dialogue with bioart/art and science strategies, exhibiting and working in collaboration with other artists, scientists, research groups and art collectives in her home country and abroad.
Maru Garcia
Maru García is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist whose work is inspired to capture, understand, and express the relationship and interaction between humans and Nature. Through the intersection between art, science, and technology, her work seeks to address environmental and social issues, particularly the protection of the world’s biodiversity and ecosystems.
Rita Blaik
Rita Blaik is a multidisciplinary scientist and artist based in Los Angeles, California. Her life's goal is to find new and innovative ways of communicating science to people through interactive discussions, art, and other media. Since 2009 she has been an instructor for the Sci|Art Nanolab and from 2011-2012, was the Art|Sci Center Networking Outreach Coordinator. She had her first solo exhibition at the Art|Sci Center, Altered States, in Fall 2012. Rita received her B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of California at Irvine, and is currently pursuing a PhD in the same at UCLA. She is a proud fellow of the NSF IGERT Clean Energy for Green Industry fellowship and works with Professor Bruce Dunn on biological fuel cell systems and architectures.
Romie Littrell
I research and create inspirational experiences from health and biotech concepts. I like to fuse digital media, tangible hardware, and storytelling into something that makes life richer as well as longer. I'm also experienced in guiding teams through user-centered design and rapid prototyping to turn things and ideas into actions.
Santiago Torres
Santiago Torres is an astrophysicist working as a postdoctoral scholar in UCLA's Physics and Astronomy department. His research focuses on the dynamical interactions of different celestial bodies, from stars to planets and comets. Santiago obtained his Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands. Since then, he has also explored the universe through Art and traverses the intersection between Art and Science. Santiago is currently developing the project: ScienceArt:Collective {SA:C}, a space to connect and initiate collaborations between scientists and artists worldwide. Santiago has published his scientific work in several high-impact journals in astrophysics. His scientific and ArtSci works can be found here: https://santiago-torres.com
Sarah Brady
Sarah Rosalena Brady is an artist working in film, computation, sound, and installation. She challenges Western ideological systems to imply a different contextual model that is transformative and transformational: a shapeshifter. Her work has been presented at San Francisco Cinematheque, Northwest Film Forum, Gray Area Art and Technology, SOMArts Cultural Center, Fylkingen (SE), Centro Cultura Digital (MX), and the deYoung Museum.
Siddharth Ramakrishnan
http://www.siddharthramakrishnan.com/
I am interested in the cusp of disciplines and the dialog that arises at that juncture. Art and Science have long been thought to be completely divergent fields, but I believe that there is a lot to be discovered by blending the two, and by allowing scientists and artists to engage with one another.
TengChao Zhou
TC Zhou is an LA-based computational media artist. He combines creative coding with gay literature written in classical Chinese. He blends programming and natural languages (in both Chinese and English) to create generative art that is interactive and animated. His work is driven by machine intelligence, producing endless variations. In addition, TC Zhou creates experimental queer games that explore queer lives. TC Zhou's games draw on his own experiences and have covered topics such as gay liberation, sex education, destigmatization, queer temporality, and the human sexuality spectrum. TC Zhou received an MFA in media arts from UCLA and a B.S. in Computer Science from NYU. He was a panelist at the UCLA Queer Graduate Research Conference (2022 & 2023). His work was shown at V2_ lab (Rotterdam), Art Machines 2 (CityU Hong Kong), SIGGRAPH DAC SPARKS, Top Art Space (Guangzhou), UCLA, and Spectra Studio (Los Angeles).