Andrew Pelling – AiR jury
Introducing KLAS AiR Jury members (III)
KLAS also welcomes on the Jury Board biohacker, award winning scientist, entrepreneur and TED speaker Andrew Pelling.
Andrew has built a career on unapologetic curiosity, creativity and serendipity. He is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, where he founded and directs a curiosity-driven research lab that brings together Artists, Scientists, Social Scientists and Engineers to explore speculative living technologies of the future.
The lab uses low-cost, open source materials and methods to explore speculative living technologies of the future. He has, for instance, created human body parts made from plants and grown living skins on LEGOs – innovations with the potential to replace prohibitively expensive commercial biomaterials. Andrew is also the co-founder and CTO of Spiderwort, a mission driven company developing open source platforms to enable the widespread and global adoption of biological research in all environments and economic contexts. Most recently, Andrew founded pHacktory, a street-level research lab in Ottawa that amplifies community ideas through a potent mixture of craft, serendipity and curiosity.
Andrew’s work has been in the international media spotlight for many years, with recognition in outlets such as Wired, Huffington Post, NPR, Scientific American, Popular Science, BBC, Der Spiegel, Deutsche Welle and others, as well as numerous highlights in the Canadian media and Scientific media. In 2016, he was named a TED Fellow, one of 21 people chosen annually by the TED organization who are considered to be the most disruptive and transformative change-makers in the world.
Andrew completed his undergraduate studies at University of Toronto, his PhD under the supervision of James K. Gimzewski at the University of California, Los Angeles and his post-doctoral research as a Senior Research Fellow at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London with Michael A. Horton. Andrew directs the Laboratory for Biophysical Manipulation, an exploratory space where scientists, engineers and artists work in close quarters, the lab is dedicated to understanding the limits of living systems and how biological entities can be controlled, manipulated and re-purposed using non-genetic and non-pharmacological approaches. The work is heavily informed by the biophysical and biological sciences, DIY and a culture of manipulation.
The Pelling Lab is affiliated with the Department of Physics, Department of Biology, Institute for Science Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa. The Lab is also a member of the Fluxmedia Research-Creation Network (Concordia University) and collaborates closely with SymbioticA (University of Western Australia).
Full list of Publications
TED Talk – The Scientist makes ears out of apples
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