Where do art, science, and entrepreneurship meet to tackle the challenges of climate change?
ART+ is a series that explores how interdisciplinary thinking that prioritizes art and creativity inspires experimental and innovative approaches to tackling complex challenges.
ALLISON MARIA RODRIGUEZ is a Boston-based, first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in video installation and new media. Allison creates immersive experiential spaces that challenge conventional ways of knowing and understanding the world. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction, and the interconnectivity of existence.
GRACE YOUNG is a Lead Scientist at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly GoogleX), where her team is creating radical new technologies to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. An avid sailor, diver and National Geographic Explorer, Grace is passionate about developing tools to better understand, explore and manage the ocean.
ROWEN VONPLAGENHOEF is a senior at Harvard University studying Integrative Biology with a secondary in Energy and Environment. He is a Creativity and Entrepreneurship Fellow with the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Harvard and has developed 13 studio lab seminars about entrepreneurship and business model generation.
NICHOLAS MEDVESCEK (moderator) is a creative producer and consultant working across divergent disciplines to upend paradigms and inspire new connections.
ART+ is co-organized by ArtLab and Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship (LPCE) student accelerator at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.
Allison Maria Rodriguez is a first-generation Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist working predominantly in video installation and new media. She creates immersive experiential spaces that challenge conventional ways of knowing and understanding the world. Her work focuses extensively on climate change, species extinction, and the interconnectivity of existence. Rodriguez’s work has been exhibited internationally and extensively in the New England area. Rodriguez received her MFA from Tufts University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and holds a BA in Language, Literature and Culture from Antioch College in OH, obtained also through study at Oxford University in England and Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Rodriguez was recently awarded an Earthwatch Communications Fellowship for a residency at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in Manitoba to work on their “Climate Change at the Arctic’s Edge” project. Rodriguez is a core member at Fountain Street Gallery and has her studio at the Boston Center for the Arts. She is currently the Assistant Director of Boston Cyberarts.
Grace Young is a Lead Scientist at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly GoogleX), where her team is creating radical new technologies to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. An avid sailor, diver and National Geographic Explorer, Grace is passionate about developing tools to better understand, explore and manage the ocean. She earned her BSc in Mechanical & Ocean Engineering from MIT (’14), where she won the Wallace Prize as MIT’s top ocean engineering undergraduate, the Keil Award for excellence in ocean engineering research, and the Wiesner Institute Award for advancing art and technology. She received her PhD as a Marshal Scholar at the University of Oxford (’18), where she was a member of Oxford’s Ocean Research and Conservation Group in the Zoology Department and its Active Vision Laboratory in the Engineering Department. In 2019, she filmed the National Geographic documentary “The Secret of the Ocean”, where she explores connections between 300 million year old fossils in mountains and modern day coral reefs.
Rowen VonPlagenhoef is a senior at Harvard University studying Integrative Biology with a secondary in Energy and Environment. He is a Creativity and Entrepreneurship Fellow with the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Harvard and has developed 13 studio lab seminars about entrepreneurship and business model generation. As a content co-developer for LabXchange, Rowen created 20 case studies based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Rowen was a finalist in the Talents Paris 2024 startup competition for a project initiated as part of the Biopolis Program to make burial processes more environmentally friendly. His experiences range from working at Nference, a biomedical startup in Boston, being a Donor Relations and Social Innovation Analyst at One Foundation in China, to managing the Harvard Glee Club, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. He is currently working on a startup that seeks to create carbon neutral ammonia fuel from green hydrogen.
Nicholas Medvesck (moderator) is a creative producer and consultant working across divergent disciplines to upend paradigms and inspire new connections. He has served as the co-director of the MIT Hacking Arts festival, a hackathon and convening at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and the arts. He recently held the title of Director of Projects at A R E A Gallery in Boston, where he continues to serve as an advisor. His events and projects have been covered in Take Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker.
Image credit: Allison Maria Rodriguez “Wish You Were Here: Greetings from the Galápagos” at the Boston Children’s Museum.