Anne Balsamo
Dr. Balsamo is a groundbreaking national leader in media studies, a scholar and media-makerwhose work links cultural studies, digital humanities, and interactive media. She received her PhD in Communications Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and began her faculty career in the School of Literature, Culture, and Communications at Georgia Tech, where she published a distinguished book about the cultural implications of emergent biotechnologies, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. In 1999, having grown interested in the practical linkages between technology and culture, she accepted an offer to join the celebrated Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), collaborating in the design of media for reading, exhibition, public art, and cultural projects. In 2003, Dr. Balsamo moved from Silicon Valley to USC, where she had been jointly appointed in the Annenberg School of Communications and the School of Cinematic Arts. She directed the Collaborative Design Lab within the Interactive Design Division of the School of Cinematic Arts. She has been a leader in the growth of digital humanities nationally, serving on the Advisory Board of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Co-laboratory) since its founding in 2003. In 2011, she published Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work, a transmedia book (with accompanying DVD and web linkages to interactive media projects) that synthesizes and theorizes the links between her cultural studies scholarship and digital media projects.
Dr. Ljiljana Fruk
Dr. Fruk is a scientist and lecturer at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany working on the development of photosensitive bio nano hybrid systems to be used in the design of new catalysts, artificial enzymes and biosensors for nanomedicinal applications. She studied chemistry at University of Zagreb and continued to pursue her PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where she worked on the development of advanced tools for DNA detection. After award of Humboldt Fellowship and Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship she conducted a postdoctoral research on artificial enzyme catalysts at the University of Dortmund in Germany. Since 2009 she leads her own research group and is also active in exploring the interface of art and science, in particular the cultural and societal impact of new technologies such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Besides number of scientific activities, she was also a co-organizer of the first symposium on Molecular Aesthetics (2011), 3D interactive exhibition on Molecules that Changed the World, and together with artist Peter Weibel, a co-editor of Molecular Aesthetic book (2013).
Jussi Parikka
Jussi Parikka is Reader at Winchester School of Art. He has written extensively on biopolitics of network culture, media archaeology and cultural theory of technology. His recent books include Insect Media (2010) and What is Media Archaeology? (2012). He has edited collections such as Medianatures (2011) which focuses on materiality of media culture through electronic waste. Parikka blogs at Machinology (http://jussiparikka.net). From Autumn 2013 Parikka is affiliated with Bahcesehir University, Istanbul.
Darren Tofts
Darren Tofts is Professor of Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.
He is a well-known cultural critic who writes regularly for a range of national and international publications on issues to do with cyberculture, new media arts, remix culture and literary and cultural theory. He is the author (with artist Murray McKeich) of Memory Trade. A Prehistory of Cyberculture (Sydney, Interface Books, 1998), Parallax. Essays on Art, Culture and Technology (Sydney, Interface Books 1999) and Interzone: Media Arts in Australia (Thames and Hudson: Sydney, 2005). With Annemarie Jonson and Alessio Cavallaro he edited Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History (Power Publications/MIT Press, 2003) and with Lisa Gye edited Illogic of Sense: The Gregory L. Ulmer Remix (ALT-X Press, 2007). His most recent book is Alephbet: Essays on ghost-writing, nutshells & infinite space (Prague/Litterraria Pragensia, 2013).