Katia Vega

Speaker 1: Great. So that, was an awesome first chapter in our journey. Again thank you to all the speakers for just the crazy things that you’ve talked about and I’ve been thinking about and I’m excited to talk about more today, but before we get there, we’re still learning. So now we’re going to shift away from looking just a little bit. Looking at bacteria in their ability to produce materials and now actually looking at bacteria as displays and as input devices. Speaker 1: And so this is really important, especially for wearable biotech because bacteria, because they’re living care and are already monitoring and already have these built in sensors for a lot of the things that we care about and that our body’s monitoring.

00:48 - And so we have these sensors, we have ways to make them display. And so what can this reveal about our body, our state, our life? And so we’re going to have another three really inspiring speakers. Speaker 1: We’ll start with Katia Vega, who’s from UC Davis doing some really cool work in tattoos that sense monitor. We’re then going to go to Xin Liu who’s from MIT bioengineering or mechanical engineering and she’s doing work involved with wearable living hydrogels and flexible displays. And then finally we’re going to talk with Peter Wen who is working with textiles that can tell us about what we’ve been exposed to and lab coats that can let us know when things go wrong. So, all right, Katia. Katia Vega: Hello everyone. I’m Katia Vega.

01:58 - I’m an Assistant Professor from the Department of Design at UC Davis and I will go back to this image that Pattie was showing to us at the very beginning. I guess as most of us that learn about wearables maybe saw this image before from 1993. And I always thought that it was amazing to think about to be in that time with these people around campus with all these electronics or computers and sensing everything and having all this information from their body or the environment. Katia Vega: And I wanted to also show you this image. [crosstalk] Almost 20 years after that I was a postdoc here at MIT media lab at Joe Paradiso’s group.

02:53 - And you can see over here, maybe you’ll recognize some of them like Cindy, Xin, Artem, Nan, Gershon. And there are other ones that were not pictured. We were the textile group and we were a discussion group that we were talking about what will be the wearables now. And if you see comparing with the previous picture, it looks more like we are. Technology could become invisible and we could be what we wanted to express and how we want it to be shown.

03:32 - Katia Vega: So I want also to show you a little bit of what it means for me to have technology invisible. And I started this journey in 2012 when I created this concept called beauty technology. That was a way of embed electronics into cosmetics. So you could imagine maybe some conductive makeups that you blink and you turn on the lights or some fingernails with chips. [inaudible] the chip on your fingernail. Or hair extensions that are, just by touching your hair you could send your location to the police without being in danger.

04:17 - Katia Vega: So it was a way to embed electronics into our body and become these two matter of skin that we have into an interactive platform. But after that and after being part here over the Media Lab we start actually with Nick Barry thinking about what if we go deeper into the skin. And what will happen if we could embed technology inside of the skin. Katia Vega: We joined many researchers actually since people here from the media lab, like Xin Liu, Virj Kan, Nick Barry, we were from Pattie’s and Joel Paradiso’s group. And we also join with other medical schools and we were creating this project called The Dermal Abyss and it was these tattoos, but he said instead of using traditional inks, we’re going to be using biosensors.

05:22 - And these biosensors that we could inject inside of the skin and they could react and change his color, revealing information that we could usually don’t have access to. Because for example, he wanted to have access to your cholesterol levels or your glucose, you have to make some blood tests. Katia Vega: But what will happen if your tattoo is changing color and we’ll give you that information. We were doing some experiments and we were even using a tattoo gun and injecting this ink in pig skin and trying to make it to change its color. And we were doing that because inside of the skin we have these liquids, this interstitial fluid and if that ink that is in the dermis and is in direct contact with these fluids we could detect different information that is inside of our body.

06:18 - Katia Vega: So for that we were starting doing several tests with some fluorescents biosensors and some other calorimetric biosensors. The fluorescents we were using Sodium and pH. So the intensity of the fluorescents was giving us some information of lower or higher pH for example. And that calorimetric biosensors like glucose or pH too were also giving us different colors and that could also be reflected into a tattoo. Katia Vega: After that we were also creating, now with Ali Yetisen from Imperial College of London and our colleagues, we were extending this research adding new bio sensors too.

07:08 - But also what would happen in the same tatoo, we would have different colors of tattoos and we could read that through another software we developed with a camera with your cell phone so you could read that information and tag different information, seeing the same tattoo. Katia Vega: And of course this is a project still in development. I cannot make a tattoo to you right now, but… because there are still many tests that we have to do. Cytologically we could think about permeability, reversibility. We did that in an ex vivo model, we have to move in vivo clinical trials. You must think about how initially drugs takes a long time to develop. But today I wanted to share to you what were some lessons learned of creating these kind of projects. Katia Vega: First I was imagining what it means to have the skin as a display. How we have these cells tissues that could maybe conveyed into information that could reveal and cover access to these kind of like a portal to our inner self.

08:31 - Also thinking about technology that could be indistinguishable from the human body, but you’ve seen tattoos and technology that could be actually looking as part of your body, but you’ve seen tattoos. Katia Vega: We are used to have in interfaces, some buttons or some screens that you touch to having some kind of interactions. What will happen if our metabolics is an input for the interface? In this way, like you could think about what you eat or what’s happening inside of your body could be revealed. And also in my experience since the beauty technology project but also the tattoo project I was working with different artists. Different artists like it’s in a salon when I was doing my finger nails and tattoo artists in the tattoos studios that they were also very inspiring for me because they were creating their own designs and their own art and combining that with the sensors that we were implanted to them.

09:41 - Katia Vega: So I think that if you think about wearables today, we have these big technology industries that have a combination with fashion industry. So I envision the future, these all kinds of combination between technology industry but also beauty salons or tatto studios or all these different body modification technologies that could also embed these technologies that we are creating today. And as we are also talking about [inaudible] interfaces, I want to share also another project from my student [inaudible] that we are also thinking about how to create sustainable prototyping. Katia Vega: And for that we think about us as designers and creators of technology. We have a waste problem. We are generating different waves since the different iterations that we create for having one prototype or the different leftovers for creating our designs.

10:48 - And even after that we have and use prototypes that are in our shelves. And this is how my lab actually looks like. Katia Vega: And if you think about that degradation time of materials it makes, I want you maybe to reflect about our practice as prototypers or designers or creators of technology, or what it means to have all these ways that we are generating in our community. So this project was embedded different ways to use biodegradable materials. In this case Mycelium, because she could create different shapes, is water resistant, is heat resistant.

11:33 - Katia Vega: And we were embedded in that and that’s why we were using electronics to create these kinds of ways to prepare it, enhance different tangibles, interfaces on our body, but also different objects. We’re creating also different workshops and also creating different objects that showcase these ideas of having also by the real materials. And for that, I will just leave you with this cycle that shows how could we be as sustainable prototype lifecycle. And these bio [inaudible] project right now, I was showing you mainly in what it means to use at the end of life of the materials. Katia Vega: But we have to think about ahead or before that, what it means to, for having that material that you are using for digital fabrication, you have to have like create the raw material, having distribution, doing the manufacturing and sending that for you to use and create your prototypes.

12:33 - So I want to just leave you with that to, have with you as a reflection of your practice. And then maybe in the workshop week, we’ll also talk about what it means and some recommendations for improving our prototypes and the way that we create in a more sustainable way. So thank you very much. .