ACADEMIA

Neri Oxman

Professor, MIT Media Lab

Pioneering American-Israel artist, designer and architect Neri Oxman has been revolutionizing the visual arts from her perch as professor at the Media Lab at MIT. Born and raised in Haifa, Oxman moved to the US in 2005 for her PhD. She has exhibited at some of the world's most famous public spaces, including the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City – whose curator, Paola Antonelli, has hailed Oxman as "a person ahead of her time, not of her time." Oxman's numerous awards include the 2014 Vilcek Prize in Design and the Cultural Leader award from the World Economic Forum in 2016, and the MIT Collier Medal in 2016. Intellectually, Oxman is known for her concept of "material ecology," in which products and building are considered in the context of their environments. (Photo: Noah Kalina.)