I am a speculative designer working in the fields of biotechnology and interaction design. I design applications for emerging technologies and through this work examine their social and aesthetic implications.

I conduct research and design speculative products, services, systems and brands. I have made projects about the use of tissue-culture technologies in food production, the future of pharmacy-based healthcare and the aesthetics of nanotechnology at the human scale. Most recently I have been collaborating with Cambridge University’s iGem team (who won this year’s competition) alongside fellow designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. We have been running design workshops with the students and faculty and helping them to imagine the implications of their lab work and to “think outside the petri-dish”. We have also developed design proposals based on the pigment-producing E. coli bacteria that they created in the lab and which we dubbed E. chromi.

Since graduating from the RCA I have run my own design practice and worked for clients such as BERG and the BBC. Concurrent to this, I have held a research position at the RCA (2006-07) while also teaching design at Central Saint Martins college. My work has been exhibited widely. Most notably in MoMA’s Design and The Elastic Mind exhibition in 2008 and reproduced in many publications such as Wired Magazine and Seed. Subsequently my project, Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow, was acquired into MoMA’s permanent collection.

My background in visual design colours most of my work and the impetus driving me is a desire to find out how the future might look and feel.

Talks & Workshops

• Designing Synthetic Biology, The Genomics Forum, Edinburgh, 5 February 2010
• Designers in the Lab, Edinburgh University, 4 February 2010
• New Frontiers in Systems and Synthetic Biology, IChemE, Sheffield, 3 December 2009
• E.chromi, Synthetic Biology Policy Group, Royal Society, London, 24 November 2009
• Ericsson Leadership Program, London School of Economics, 22 September 2009
• Design Provocations, Creative Capital, London, 26 May 2009
• New Sciences of Protection, Institute of Advanced Studies, Lancaster, 13 March 2008

Residencies

• Visiting Fellow at the Genomics Forum, Edinburgh, February 2010
• Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Centre, New York, November 2009

Affiliations & Organisations

• Cambridge University iGEM Team 2009, Design Adviser
• Synthetic Biology Standards Network
• AlterFutures, Co-founder
• Guerilla Science, Advisory Panel

Education

• MA Interaction Design, Royal College of Art
• BA(hons) Graphic Design, Central Saint Martins

Work

• Design Interactions Research Associate, Helen Hamlyn Research Centre
• UX Designer, BBC Future Media and Technology
• Tutor, BA(hons) Graphic Design, Central Saint Martins