Neri Oxman

Often described as “Nature’s Architect,” Neri Oxman is a designer, inventor, and researcher whose work is rooted in her concept of Material Ecology—a philosophy that bridges culture and nature by integrating what is manufactured with what is biologically grown across different scales and species.

A multidisciplinary innovator, Oxman established The Mediated Matter Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010, where she pioneered Material Ecology as a field combining biology and technology to create environmentally attuned design solutions. She became a tenured professor at MIT in 2017.

Oxman earned her PhD in Design Computation from MIT in 2010. Her academic background also includes a diploma from the Architectural Association in London, studies at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, and training in medical sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 2004 and 2005, she worked as an architect and research consultant at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in London, while also contributing as a Visiting Associate and Evaluator for the SmartGeometry Group.

With more than 150 scientific publications and inventions, Oxman’s work is featured in the permanent collections of major museums worldwide, including MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the MAK Museum of Applied Arts, the FRAC Collection for Art and Architecture, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Her achievements have been recognized globally—she was named a Cultural Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2016 and joined its Expert Network. In 2018, she received both the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the London Design Innovation Medal. The following year, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Contemporary Vision Award by SFMOMA.

She is also the Founder and CEO of OXMAN.