MEET THE TEAM
Principal investigators
The project Material Imagination was born from our conversations on how to practice and teach Responsible Innovation to graduate students in the Physical Sciences. We wanted to create our own example which follows our belief that Responsible Innovation should be about including society and stakeholders into the university research and innovation practice, already from the conception of research ideas. Therefore we assembled an interdisciplinary team of
Professor Tiago Moreira
Principal Investigator
Tiago Moreira is a social scientist, who studies science and technology in society, and is particularly interested in the role of materials in everyday life.
For more information about Tiago, visit his Durham University staff profile here.
Dr Margarita Staykova
Principal Investigator
Margarita Staykova is a biophysicist by training, who studies the mechanical foundations of biological processes, and uses them to create new materials. She is interested in combining ideas and work approaches from other creative disciplines into her scientific explorations.
For more information about Margarita, visit her Durham University staff profile here.
Fellows
From January to April 2020, the Institute of Advanced Study will host a group of international fellows who will be working on the Material Imagination project. As we progress with our experiments on the living material, we will simultaneously work on identifying relevant stakeholders, and designing and testing methods of how to best include their expertise, interests and needs in the development of technological prototypes.
Alexandra Carr
Alexandra Carr is an artist, whose practice has often been described as the will to reverse entropy. Using natural phenomena as media, she explores the boundaries of materiality.
For more information about Alexandra, visit her Durham University staff profile here.
Dr Laura Forlano
Laura Forlano is a social scientist and design researcher, who studies emerging technologies and critical futures, and is particularly interested in imaginaries and materialities.
For more information about Laura, visit her Durham University staff profile here.
Professor Torben Elgaard Jensen
Torben Elgaard Jensen is a social scientist, who studies science and technology in society, and is particularly interested in how citizens and publics may become in engaged in technical and scientific innovation.
For information about Torben, visit his Durham University staff profile here.
Professor Wilson Poon
Wilson Poon is a physicist by training. He divides his science research time between soft materials (‘goo’) and bacteria, and in the industrial applications of these fields. He also has interests in theology, especially how faith relates to science, as well as in the history and philosophy of science, especially how physics and biology interact and how science relates to technology.
For more information about Wilson, visit his Durham University staff profile here.
Dr Suzie Protière
Suzie Protière is an experimental physicist, whose research focuses on the fluid-structure interactions at very small scales in order to understand material wetting, shape transformations and or collective behavior.
For more information about Suzie, visit her Durham University staff profile here.
Other collaborators
Lucas Le Nagard
Lucas Le Nagard is a PhD student, whose project is focused on manipulating bacteria with lipid membranes. He is jointly supervised by Prof. Wilson Poon and Dr. Margarita Staykova.
