Join us for the third Food For Thought event of the season. Featuring Ettore Santi (Architecture) and Katia Zolotovsky (Art + Design / College of Science, Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology). Each Faculty member will share a short presentation about their research and lunch will be served!

Katia Zolotovsky is an Assistant Professor in Art + Design with a joint appointment in the College of Science, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. She works in the Food-Water-Energy Nexus thematic area.

Katia is an architect, biologist, and bio-design researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Computation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where her dissertation focused on design and computation with biologically active materials. Katia’s research focuses on the impact of biotechnology on everyday life and the ecosystems we live in, as well as the implications of this emerging technology. In her research, she collaborates with material scientists, synthetic biologists, and computational designers to develop practical ways for artists and designers to engage with biological materials and systems.

Katia’s interdisciplinary research has been published in both design and science high-impact journals. She has won awards at international conferences, such as the Living Machine, Education and Research in Computer-Aided Design in Europe, and EURO Bio-inspired Materials. She serves on the editorial board of Research Directions Biotechnology Design, Cambridge University Press. Her work has been supported by science and entrepreneurship grants such as the NSF Division of Materials Research, Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund, Coastal Ecology Assessment Innovation and Modeling, and the Activate Fellowship for Entrepreneurs Futures Network.

Ettore Santi is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Architecture and in the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies. Ettore’s scholarship bridges design research with debates in rural geography, agrarian political ecology, and the environmental humanities.

His current book project “The Designed Revolution: The Corporate Reinvention of China’s Rural Environment” offers an ethnographic account of how architects, planners, and state experts are redesigning China’s rural villages into spaces for agribusiness food extraction and ecotourism. This project received support from the Mellon Foundation and the Luce Foundation at the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation at the Social Sciences Research Council, the Graham Foundation, and China’s National Science Foundation.

Ettore’s design pedagogy addresses socioecological challenges emerging in rural areas of the United States and globally. He designed and taught courses in partnership with community groups in rural California and New England, taking over issues related to agribusiness expansion, food extraction, water scarcity, Indigenous politics, seasonal immigrant farm labor, and rural homelessness.

Ettore holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from UC Berkeley, a M.Arch from Tongji University of Shanghai and a M.Arch from Polytechnic University of Milan. He has worked as a designer, consultant, curator, and educator in China, Italy, and the United States.