Parsons School of Design

Carolina Obregón holds an M.A. in Fashion and Creative Sustainability from Aalto University in Helsinki and an A.A.S. in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design. In 2014, she designed, developed, and implemented the first undergraduate program in Sustainable Fashion & Management in LATAM at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University (Bogotá). She was an assistant professor at Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá), and her teaching and research focused on biodesign, sustainable fashion, and textiles. Under her direction, Carolina's students won the Biodesign Challenge on three occasions: in 2018, Stella McCartney & PETA Challenge with Woocoa, the vegan wool; in 2019, the overall prize with NanoFreeze, a protein-based refrigeration system, and in 2020 MANA The Future of Beauty Challenge with Linneo, a biopigment eyeshadow. She is part of the startups NanoFreeze and E.biodye. She teaches at Parsons School of Design in the schools of Art, Media, and technology, Fashion, and Strategic Design.

Jane Pirone is an Associate Professor of Design Ecologies at Parsons School of Design. She served as Dean of the School of Design Strategies from 2015-2019 and as Director of the Communication Design program from 2006-2011. Jane’s creative and transdisciplinary practice engages with living systems, storytelling, participatory futures, and new technologies from critical, queer and post-human theoretical perspectives. Jane has been a founding member of the Datamyne Project (MYNE), the Urban Research Toolkit (URT), the urbanBIKE initiative, and YouthBike. Prior to joining Parsons, Jane was the founder/creative director of Not For Tourists, drummergirl.com, and the award winning design firm, Happy Mazza Media, working with clients such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM, Nickelodeon, and the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

Harpreet Sareen is a scientist, artist, and educator based in New York. His work is situated at the intersection of material science, biology, and electronics and draws on the complementary abilities of the biological and artificial worlds. Harpreet terms this as 'Convergent Design' to create hybrid substrates and bionic materials that lend themselves for future ecological machinery, sensing systems, and interaction design. Harpreet is an assistant professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design, New York. He also directs the Synthetic Ecosystems Lab that focuses on biological futures, their implications in interaction design, and the cybernetics of organisms and materials.