Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she leads the Mediated Matter research group. She is known for art and architecture that combine design, biology, computing, and materials engineering.
Her work embodies environmental design and digital morphogenesis, with shapes and properties that are determined by their context. She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work, placing materials in context. Stylistic trademarks include brightly colored and textured surfaces with structure at many scales, and composite materials whose hardness, color, and shape vary over an object. The results are often in collaboration with or inspired by nature and biology.
Many of Oxman's projects use new platforms and techniques for 3D printing and fabrication. They include co-fabrication systems for building hybrid structures with silkworms, bees, and ants; Ocean Pavilion, a water-based fabrication platform that built structures such as Aguahoja out of chitosan;
and Glass I and II, the first 3D printer for optically transparent glass.
Some of these platforms are being developed for broader use.