Jury Member

Karen Ingram is a creative director, designer, and artist who uses her skill set to promote scientific awareness. She has a keen interest in the field of synthetic biology. As a Synthetic Biology LEAP fellow, she is recognized as an emerging leader. Karen co-authored “Biobuilder: Synthetic Biology in the Lab” (O’Reilly, 2015), a synthetic biology curriculum in which she crafted visual elements and teaching aides. She served as a design track judge at IGEM in 2015. 

For more than four years, she has co-organized Brooklyn-based science cabaret, The Empiricist League. A long-time planning committee member of SXSW Interactive, Karen focuses on curating topics such as the overlap of science and art, emerging biotechnologies, and their effects on society. She’s a co-organizer of BioHTP (BioHack The Planet), a conference by biohackers, for biohackers. Her interest in science communications extends into the realm of education; she is a creative strategy instructor for NYU SHERP’s Entrepreneurial Science Journalism course.

A veteran in the world of digital design, advertising and marketing, Ingram has worked at Campfire, McCann Erikson (yes, that McCann), and UNICEF, to name a few. Her work has appeared in many publications including titles from Die Gestalten (Berlin), Scientific American, and The FWA, where she was named a “Digital Pioneer.” Ingram has written tutorials on digital design for Computer Arts magazine and New Riders publications. She has presented her work globally at Synbiobeta (London), the AIGA (New Orleans), Flash in the Can (Toronto), Biofabricate (New York), Synberc (MIT) and SXSW (Austin, TX).