Caroline Chou is a scientist, creator, and designer who began her journey studying soil fungi for antimicrobial properties at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work extends beyond the lab, having collaborated with Asian youth to challenge the stigma of mental health and with residents to build community power through art and storytelling in the San Francisco Bay Area. These experiences have guided her commitment to uplifting community stories that fosters awareness for social and environmental change.

She draws parallels between collaborative relationships in community organizing and the adaptive resilience observed in ecological dynamics. Additionally influenced by her background in public health and microbiology, she focuses on system dynamics and the understanding that relationships do not exist in a vacuum but rather within interconnected networks.

What drives her work today is the replenishing and entangled relationships that microbes have with the world around them—how the built environment and ecological systems, down to the microbial level, are interwoven, with every element influencing the other.

Caroline’s current research and art practice revolves around regenerating the fractured relationships with the natural world, community, and systems of power with interactive mixed-media. By bringing together history, biodesign, and microbiology, she aims to tell a more holistic story by bringing the local community and scientific researchers together in conversation.

Caroline is currently pursing an interdisciplinary Master of Arts at New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study exploring the interplay between fungi and insects.