Tal Danino is an interdisciplinary artist, synthetic biologist, and assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University focused on creatively communicating the science of microorganisms through a visual medium that transcends audiences. Growing up the son of an artist and an engineer, he is well-versed in both worlds and seeks to draw connections between them in all his work. He is also the Director of the Synthetic Biological Systems Laboratory at Columbia University, where he focuses on programming DNA sequences of probiotics to use them as diagnostics and therapeutics for cancer treatment.

Originally from Los Angeles, Tal received B.S. degrees in Physics, Math, and Chemistry from UCLA, a PhD in Bioengineering from UC San Diego, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT. In 2015, he was selected as a TED Fellow, and his remarkable imagery of the hidden microscopic world has been featured in The New York Times, Nature, and WIRED.

As our first BioArtist-in-Residence, you can also see Tal’s work featured across Seed’s website, social media, and the walls of our office.