Harpreet Sareen is an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design and Director of Synthetic Ecosystems Lab at The New School. His research is situated at the intersection of Material Science, Biology, and Electronics and draws on the complementary abilities of the biological and artificial worlds. He terms this as ‘Convergent Design’ and creates bionic materials and hybrid substrates that lend themselves for future ecological machinery, sensing systems, and interaction design. Harpreet has previously created robots driven by physiological signals of plants, nanosensors inside plant leaves for water monitoring, and grown electronic nanowires inside plant stems.

His experience spans corporate research wings, studios, and museums to academic centers having previously worked at Ars Electronica Museum, Google Creative Lab, Microsoft Research, National University of Singapore, Keio University, Telecom Paris, and The University of Tokyo. He has previously been named as MIT Technology Review Under 35 Innovator and awarded CHI Golden Mouse, Edison Award – Gold, SXSW Interactive Innovation Award, and Fast Company World Changing Ideas. At Berggruen, Harpreet will be creating installations that refocus the human attention on underwater macroalgae through recording of their physiological phenomena in various coasts of the world.