Projects

A portfolio.

Twenty years of work, from the cell-culture lab to permanent museum exhibitions to current nursing-research collaborations. Most of these projects were credited under Ryan Romie Littrell before 2023. Recent work is credited under Ryan Romie Kind or Romie Kind. Each entry links to a detail page.

Clinical research

Designed cover: three teal medication capsules on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Clinical Research.

Describing how medications actually move, or stall, on the way to people in supportive housing, where the clinical literature stops.

Connect to Meds

Active nursing-research collaboration on improving medication access among marginally-housed residents of San Francisco's 6th Street corridor. Manuscript in progress.

Clinical research 2025–present

Health-experience design

Two figures silhouetted against the HEAL Geoscope wall at the HEAL Institute pavilion. The wall shows a hexagonal grid of circular ecology displays for Arctic, Forest (Ganges Delta), and Aquatic (Mesoamerican Reef) zones, with a central radial visualization of atmospheric CO₂.

HEAL Institute pavilion

Permanent pavilion at Dubai's Museum of the Future exploring near-future preventive medicine, longevity, and personalized care. Awarded Blooloop's 2024 Innovation Award.

Health-experience design 2024
The Body Metrics exhibition floor at The Tech Interactive: a procession of tall faceted columns in cyan, magenta, blue, and teal labeled HEART SYNC, DIGITAL REFLECTION, DATA POOL, and BOUNCE, set against a deep purple carpet under museum lighting.

Turned visitors' heart rate, skin response, breathing, and attention into something they could see, change, and compare. Biofeedback, run as a public exhibition.

Body Metrics

Permanent exhibition on wearable biometrics, biofeedback, and mindfulness. Visitors used real-time physiologic data to explore attention, stress, and emotional state.

Health-experience design 2013–2016
Close view of the Digital Reflection touchscreen in Body Metrics: a radial profile wheel with the visitor's own pixelated face at the center, segments labeled with affective and physiological states such as PLEASED, TENSE, ACTIVE, and QUIET, ringed by activity and social-communication scales.

Turned one visitor's physiological and emotional signal into a radial portrait, then set it beside others' to compare.

Body Metrics: Digital Reflection

Visitors wore a biometric sensor band that turned their physiological and emotional signals into a personal radial profile, then showed how closely it matched other visitors'.

Health-experience design 2013–2016
Concept rendering of a three-part biotech-center gallery, drawn in white wireframe on a black ground. Left: a genomic testing station with a single visitor at a curved counter. Middle: a sequencing and data-analysis station with a visitor reaching toward a green molecular visualization. Right: a wall-scale operations-feed dashboard in teal with a visitor watching it.

Public-Engagement Galleries in China Biotech Centers

Led a small design group developing public-facing gallery spaces inside genomics and big-data tech centers in China. Three-act flow (Create / Visualize / Use), grown out of the Biodesign Studio work at The Tech Interactive.

Health-experience design post-Biodesign Studio (2017+)
Designed cover: a single clean heartbeat waveform in teal across a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Health-Experience Design.

What biometric data means once it leaves the clinic and lands in people's own hands.

Human Data Exhibition

Early Tech Interactive program on biometric data and self-quantification, supported by Kaiser Permanente.

Health-experience design 2013

Public-engagement research

About a dozen bootcamp participants jump with arms raised on a waterfront terrace, the San Francisco Bay Bridge spanning the water behind them under a clear sky.

Studying whether a program changes what people do afterward. The outcome question in any intervention.

Immersion to Action

Cross-disciplinary research program studying how immersive science programming changes audience behavior after they leave the room. Gebert Rüf Scientainment Grant.

Public-engagement research 2023
Four people stand around a glowing orange light-table holding petri dishes inside a festival tent at dusk. One wears nitrile gloves and leans in to examine the illuminated samples.

Artist-Scientist Festival Residency

NSF-funded residency program pairing artists with scientists to produce festival-scale public-engagement work. Residency Director and event producer with Guerilla Science / Pratt Institute.

Public-engagement research 2017–2018
Nighttime at the 2017 Oregon Eclipse Festival. People gather around a tall carved totem under a star-filled sky, with colored lights glowing on trees in the background.

Guerilla Science: Oregon Eclipse 2017

Festival-scale science programming I produced for Guerilla Science at the 2017 Oregon Eclipse Festival, as part of the NSF artist-scientist residency.

Public-engagement research 2017
Designed cover: a radiating teal burst of lines and points on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Public-Engagement Research.

Guerilla Science: FIGMENT

Participatory science-and-art festival programming I produced for Guerilla Science at FIGMENT during the 2017–2018 producer period.

Public-engagement research 2017–2018
Romie holding an early BacPack prototype, a wooden tabletop unit marked with orange BIOHACK tape, gesturing toward the camera. A monitor in the background shows a CAD wireframe of the same enclosure.

BacPack: tangibles for biology learning

Two ACM-published research papers on the role of tangible interaction in a museum exhibit for synthetic biology. Built into the BioDesign Studio installation at The Tech Interactive.

Public-engagement research 2016–2017
Designed cover: a teal network of connected nodes on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Biodesign.

SynFlo: tangible synthetic-biology exhibit

ACM TEI '16 paper and Tech Interactive installation exploring tangible interaction for synthetic-biology learning.

Public-engagement research 2016

Community biology

Aerial view of the iGEM Giant Jamboree floor, packed with hundreds of student teams in coordinated team-color clothing arranged in a vast curved formation under stage screens reading GIANT JAMBOREE.

iGEM Foundation, Community Labs Track

Chaired the Community Labs Track at the iGEM Foundation for the 2015 competition cycle, on behalf of community-bio labs participating in the world's largest synthetic-biology student competition.

Community biology 2015
Visitors gather around a glowing tabletop touchscreen displaying a circular cell-design interface, exploring a synthetic-biology activity in an exhibition hall.

LA Biohackers

Co-founded a non-institutional community group with the goal of an open community biolab in Los Angeles. Active 2010–2014, alongside fellowship and lectureship at the UCLA Art|Sci Center.

Community biology 2010–2014
Designed cover: a teal petri dish with scattered colonies and a pipette, labeled Community Biology.

BioForge — DIYbio at MICROWAVE 2011

A public hands-on DIYbio genomic-exploration installation I led at the MICROWAVE International New Media Arts Festival in Hong Kong, on behalf of the UCLA Art|Sci Center. I called it BioForge.

Community biology 2011

Biodesign + synthetic biology

Three young visitors and an adult lean over an interactive tabletop in BioDesign Studio at The Tech Interactive. The screen shows a circular cell-design interface; in the background, an organic-form sculpture printed with a generative pattern is partly visible.

BioDesign Studio

Permanent exhibition on synthetic biology, with a working biological design lab on the museum floor, tangible-tabletop microbe simulators, live cell-culture stations, and visitor-runnable design tools.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2013–2017
Visitors at the curved Creature Creation table in BioDesign Studio. An adult and several children assemble tangible tokens while a synthetic creature they have designed animates on the projection wall behind them.

BioDesign Studio: Creature Creation Station

Visitors combine tangible bio-element tokens at a curved table to design a hybrid synthetic creature, which then animates in a shared projected ecosystem.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2013–2017
A researcher in a black top and blue nitrile gloves works at the Living Colors Lab tangible table in BioDesign Studio, moving labware tokens. A wall of small multicolored lights glows in the dark background.

BioDesign Studio: Living Colors Lab

Visitors use tangible tokens to program bacteria to express pigment; successful designs accumulate on an RGB dot wall with a live count of dishes grown.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2013–2017
A visitor stands at a tablet in a dark gallery, facing a large organic biomorphic sculpture onto which an orange-and-cyan generative pattern is projected. The tablet screen shows the same pattern forming over a stylized organ.

BioDesign Studio: Pattern Emergence

Visitors adjust the variables behind biological pattern formation on a tablet and project the resulting generative patterns onto a biomorphic sculpture.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2013–2017
Designed cover: a teal DNA double helix with connecting rungs across a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Biodesign.

DIY Genetics Exhibition

Multi-year exhibition initiative at The Tech Interactive on synthetic biology and genetic engineering for the public. Backed by foundation grants to The Tech.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2013–2015
An empty BioTinkering Lab interior at The Tech Interactive: warm wood-toned cabinetry with circular display cutouts, a backlit yellow-orange feature panel, hexagonal-base workbenches, and stools arranged for visitor activities. A teal-and-cream patterned floor sweeps through the space.

BioTinkering Lab

An on-floor biology lab at The Tech Interactive that earned the 2019 Leading Edge Award for Visitor Experience for the institution. I served as Project Director on the Tech's Health and Biotech exhibitions team.

Biodesign + synthetic biology 2017–2019

Art-science

Designed cover: a segmented teal flavor wheel on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Art-Science.

Guerilla Science: Flavor Feast (Burning Man 2017)

A Guerilla Science multisensory dining installation I produced at Burning Man in 2017.

Art-science 2017
Designed cover: concentric teal orbital ellipses with a planet, labeled Art-Science.

Guerilla Science: Intergalactic Travel Bureau (Burning Man 2018)

A Guerilla Science immersive space-travel installation I produced at Burning Man in 2018.

Art-science 2018
Scanning electron micrograph of overlapping Morpho-butterfly wing scales: rounded, ridged plates layered like roof tiles, rendered in deep grayscale, with one scale at upper-center catching highlight.

Blue Morph

Aesthetic, interaction, and technical design of the interactive platform on Blue Morph, Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski's bio-art installation, during my UCLA Art|Sci period.

Art-science c. 2010–2014
RegisTree installation view as it appeared in the End of You series at Gray Area, San Francisco.

RegisTree

My piece in The End of You, the immersive exhibition that opened at Gray Area in San Francisco in 2020. Credited as lead artist on RegisTree within the series.

Art-science 2019–2020

Bench research

Designed cover: a cluster of teal cell outlines with nuclei on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Bench Research.

MIT Biotechnology Process Engineering Center

Lab Manager at the MIT BPEC, a microfluidic-bioreactor research center; junior author on a 2007 Stem Cells biomaterials paper; graduate advisor to the 2007 MIT iGEM team.

Bench research 2006–2008
Designed cover: a serpentine teal microfluidic channel on a soft paper-to-mint background, labeled Bench Research.

Modular microfluidic platform for biology education

Master's thesis project at UCLA Bioengineering. Engineered a biomimetic culture platform for bone-tissue remodeling, with applications to osteoporosis-treatment development and broader biomedical-engineering education.

Bench research
Designed cover: concentric teal rings forming an iris and pupil on a paper-to-mint background, labeled Bench Research.

Biopolymer Transplantable Cornea

R&D supervisor at Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (Hawaii) on the Biopolymer Transplantable Cornea project. Cell-culture lab supervision, IRB / FDA compliance drafting, and Eye Bank-certified tissue handling.

Bench research 2004–2006
Designed cover: a teal grid of electrode contacts on a CCD-style array with curved neural traces between them, labeled Bench Research.

Neural Matrix CCD

CBI concept-research and prototyping (with cell-culture-side support) on the Neural Matrix CCD, an early-stage neuron-on-array biosensor for monitoring neuronal networks. R&D 100 Award winner (2005), built at Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Bench research 2004–2006