Katia Vega (@kfcito) is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis, where she founded and directs the Interactive Organisms Lab. Her laboratory leads new explorations in novel interfaces in and around the skin, and within bio-organisms, in areas such as: Beauty Technology (electronics embedded into cosmetics); Body Modification Technologies (biosensors in tattoos and dental orthodontics for health monitoring); and Growable Interfaces (sustainable interfaces through bio-based materials as a substrate for circuitry). Previously, Vega was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Media Laboratory, following her PhD and master’s work in computer science at PUC-Rio (Brazil). She has also worked as a researcher in the Fine Arts Department at HKBU (Hong Kong), following her undergraduate studies in done in Computer Science at the National University of San Marcos (Peru). Vega’s work has been featured by BBC, New Scientist, Wired, Discovery, CNN, and been recognized with awards from SXSW, Ars Electronica, Johnson & Johnson, and CNET, among others. In 2016, Springer published her book Beauty Technology: Designing Seamless Interfaces for Wearable Computing. [Website]
