Karen Ingram

​Karen Ingram is a creative director, designer, and artist who uses her skill set to promote scientific awareness. As a Synthetic Biology LEAP fellow, she is recognized as an emerging leader in synthetic biology. Karen co-authored “Biobuilder: Synthetic Biology in the Lab” (O’Reilly, 2015), a synbio curriculum in which she crafted visual elements. Since 2012 she has co-organized Brooklyn-based science cabaret, The Empiricist League. A long-time planning committee member of SXSW Interactive, Karen focuses on topics such as the overlap of science and art, emerging biotechnologies, and journalism. 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, and UNICEF, to name a few. Her art and writing have appeared in titles from Die Gestalten, New Riders, as well as Scientific American, BioCoder, and Computer Arts magazines. She has presented her work globally at events such as Synbiobeta (London), the AIGA (New Orleans), Flash in the Can (Toronto), Biofabricate (New York), Synberc (MIT), SB7 (Singapore), and SXSW (Austin, TX).