Bay Area artist Kate Nichols synthesizes nanoparticles to mimic structurally colored animals, grows artificial skin from microorganisms, and makes her own paints, following fifteenth-century recipes. The long tradition of painters as material innovators inspired Kate to become the first artist-in-residence in the Alivisatos Lab, a nanoscience laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Her artwork has been featured on the cover of the journal Nature, on the TED stage, in the Stavanger Kunstmuseum in Norway, and in The Leonardo Museum’s permanent collection. Kate has been named a TED Fellow, a Jacob K. Javits Fellow, and a Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellow. She was previously a resident at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and at the Vermont Studio Center, where she was a fellow. She has an MFA from California College of the Arts, an MA in Visual Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Painting from Kenyon College. Kate lectures nationally and internationally at universities and museums, such as the San Jose Museum of Art, Stanford University, the University of Florida, and Northwestern University. Most recently, Kate was an artist-in-residence at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, where she continued her exploration of CRISPR Cas-9 gene-editing technology.
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