ABOUT
Life is technology. Now with DNA in the toolkit for artists and engineers alike, we need a culture engine for biology that moves beyond the speculative and into the material.
Soft Genes is a research community that connects overlapping worlds in art, academia, and industry to enable creative practice that centers biology via interdisciplinary collaboration. Through sharing materials and skills, we aim to enable work that eschews the boundaries of "art" and "science”.
Our broader mission is to educate and inspire advocacy for humanist biological futures outside of the lab and contribute to their societal potential.
We host events and workshops that provide creative exchange for scientists and artists, with eyes towards curating genre-bending projects.
We are so excited to see what grows from this primordial soup.
Curious about the kinds of artwork we at Soft Genes find inspiring? Check out our curated archive.
Soft Genes was founded in Los Angeles in 2024 by Lera Niemackl & Olivia Stearn.
Lera Niemackl is a Los Angeles/Austin-based artist and scientist primarily working with bioengineered systems in the lab and studio.
She is a former research fellow at Metabolic Studio where she worked on soil remediation via engineered insect gut microbiomes. She is the former resident biologist at the Open Discovery Institute (The ODIN), a biohacker and genetic engineering community hub that is committed to education via open source and DIY gene editing.
Her academic background is in 3D arts and linguistics, which she has applied to her work in biotech for the better part of a decade.
Olivia Stearn is an organizer with projects in synthetic biology, music, writing and a current obsession with creating spaces for the nexus of all of the above.
She feels lucky to have been a part of exciting “firsts” in the synbio sphere - participating in early stage gene therapy research at the National Eye Institute (NIH), launching novel robotics builds for synthetic biology scale-up in food, materials and medicines.
She has go-to-market experience across iOT, software and hardware in biotechnology and was an early team member of Colossal Bioscience’s first commercial project, Form Bio.
She has a quote from Brave New World tattooed down her left arm and lives in Los Angeles.
hello@softgenes.love