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2023 SYMBIOSIS
Our 8th edition of Symbiosis has been announced.
Scroll down to learn more about the 12 participants this year!

The initiative is supported by the Simons Foundation.

Symbiosis will take place from October 20-27 in New York as part of the
16th Annual Science New Wave Festival.
Scientists and filmmakers will make short films over the course of one week.

Learn more about the Symbiosis initiative and how to apply for next year.
Meet the Symbiosis 2023 Participants!

All Symbiosis Participants have a unique 12-nucleotide SNW ID that identifies them as Science New Wave Luminary Members. Check out their Science New Wave Manifesto Videos on Labocine / Habitat.
Scientists
  • Broc is a cognitive neuroscientist studying how psychedelics (like magic mushrooms and LSD) affect the brain and how these changes relate to therapeutic improvements in various psychiatric conditions.
  • Anastasia is originally from Greece and currently a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute. Her scientific interests lay at the intersection of cancer biology, immunology and somatosensory behaviors. She is an avid reader of poetry and theatrical pieces and she loves anything outdoors, from hiking to skydiving.
  • Wyatt wants to understand the genetic changes that keep different species from mixing. How is it that two genomes stop understanding how to talk to each other after a long time apart? Through genomics he reads out the stories of genomic miscommunication in hybrid animals to get at the heart of their incompatibilities.
  • Arun is a PhD student at Yale University's School of the Environment and a Lewis B. Cullman Fellow with the New York Botanical Garden. His research incorporates traditional management and restoration practices into tropical industrial forests to improve biodiversity and economic productivity, serve local communities, and achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Lauren is a neuroscientist pursuing her PhD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She studies how different parts of the brain communicate to make memories, and how that communication gets disrupted in epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. In her free time you can find her participating in science outreach, writing, baking, and listening to sci-fi/fantasy audiobooks in central park.
  • Kelly is a marine biologist with a passion for storytelling. She is motivated by curiosity and a sense of discovery and my lab group's research brings attention to the central, yet under-appreciated, roles that gelatinous zooplankton (jellyfish and other watery, transparent creatures) play in marine ecosystems. Her ultimate hope is that audiences will learn more about the process of doing science and also develop greater empathy for the oceans.
Filmmakers
  • Mark Elijah is a film director, writer, editor and producer, and is the Founder and former Artistic Director of Rooftop Films. Mark's feature film directorial debut, "Approaching the Unknown," is a philosophical film about a man alone on a one-way journey in space. The film was theatrically distributed by Paramount Pictures and now streaming online. Mark also directed, co-produced and created the story for "Year Million," a six-hour fiction / documentary hybrid mini-series about the effects of technology on the future of humanity. The show aired internationally on National Geographic. Born and raised in New York City, Mark Elijah Rosenberg received his BA in Film from Vassar College and teaches film at Hunter College.
  • Adriana is a Latinx filmmaker, originally from the Washington D.C. area, who currently resides in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is passionate about telling meaningful diverse stories, creating content for clients as a cinematographer, editor, and producer. She is equally interested in creating work that explores movement and rhythm through the audiovisual medium. Adriana has worked on many socially conscious projects in various countries including England, South Africa, and Brazil.

    Adriana is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Media Studies at The New School with a Graduate Certificate in Media Management. She completed a certificate of further education in filmmaking at the New York Film Academy and graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor of Arts in Human Services and minors in Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies.
  • Omar is a visual artist and poet. He has exhibited with Visual Therapy and Gallery BAWA as a painter, and his illustrations have appeared in Word For/Word, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Denver Quarterly, Blackbox Manifold, and Caesura. His poetry has been published in Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Silver Pinion, the AUKuwait Review, and Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry & Commentary (Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2020).
  • Evan is a Vancouver-based filmmaker whose work delves into the texture and nuance of subjective experience using a heightened sensory lens. His narrative and nonfiction films often explore relationships between human society and the natural world by incorporating perspectives of non-humans.
  • G. Anthony is an artist-filmmaker based in NYC. Anthony is deeply awed by the living world and how techno-urban lifestyles change our relationship to natural and urban environments. His films have screened at NYFF, IFF Rotterdam, SFFILM, DocNYC, and pulbished on Harper's Magazine and Le Cinema Club, amongst others.
  • Gavati is an artist/filmmaker from India, currently based in Los Angeles. She has a cross-disciplinary practice spanning performance, 16mm film and illustration. Her work responds to the tropes and standards present in commercial media practices such as the photo studio, television and political propaganda. Gavati is the co-founder of Artists in Revolution Collective (AIRC) and received her MFA Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts.
Key Dates

SYMBIOSIS
Initiative
supported by the Simons Foundation

>> Get your Symbiosis logos/banners in Press Section
October 19 @ 7PM
Symbiosis Mixer / SNW16 Day -1
GMT Tavern (West Village, Manhattan)

October 23 @ 630PM (doors open at 6pm)
Symbiosis Lab Meeting / SNW16 Day 4

Caveat (Lower East Side, Manhattan)
RSVP NOW

October 27 @ 7PM
Symbiosis Closing Night / SNW16 Day 8
Wythe Hotel (Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

October 28 @ 10AM
Symbiosis Roundtable / SNW16 Day +1
NYU Production Lab (East Village, Manhattan)
Symbiosis 2023 Jury
  • Filmmaker
    Ramey is an independent filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in British Columbia, Canada. Her work engages with ideas relating to biology, ecology, the Anthropocene, human-nonhuman relations, mythologies of the American West, and the discourses of documentary image.

    Symbiosis 2022 participant & winner with Niccolò Bigagli: "Interference Pattern."
  • Physicist
    Niccolò, after traveling the world, finally settled down in New York as a graduate student in Physics at Columbia University. His work focuses on developing our understanding of the quantum mechanical rules governing the behavior of the fundamental constituents of matter: atoms and molecules. I aim to gain enough insights into the building blocks of our world to then be able to attain as much control over them as physically allowed.

    Symbiosis 2022 participant & winner with Ramey Newell: "Interference Pattern."
  • Neuroscientist
    Klavdia is a graduate student in neuroscience at NYU using computational modeling to study how fairly simple interactions between neurons can give rise to complex phenomenon like our ability to keep rhythm for music. She is excited to explore how scientific ideas reflect on our selves and our experiences through film.

    Symbiosis Director 2022 and Symbiosis 2021 participant with Deniz Tortum: "A Sentimental Science."
  • Animator, Biologist
    Sophie is a research biologist and sometimes also an animator and science filmmaker. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at NYU, studying the genetics that contribute to the differences in radiation response among animals. As a filmmaker Sophia has created animated videos in many settings, including a pop-science series, educational workshops, college-level classroom materials, scientific grant applications, and documentary film.

    Symbiosis Director Emeritus
  • Neuroscientist
    Arianna is a Neuroscience researcher, she investigates how the human brain creates meaning through language and music, and through audition and vision. She is passionate about science outreach and SciArt, and she is interested in facilitating connections between scientists and artists. She is the director of the Imagine Science Symbiosis Initiative and a Resident Scholar at the SAi Resident Collective.

    Symbiosis Director, Symbiosis 2021 participant & winner with Yashu Raghunandan : "I invite you."
Films are created over the course of the festival week from Oct 20-27.
HOW IT WORKS

On opening night, October 19th, 6 filmmakers and 6 scientists will be paired up and sent off into the city to begin filmmaking with a $2,500 stipend in hand.

The pairs will meet on Monday, October 23 at Caveat for our Symbiosis Lab Meeting and speak about their art/science works-in-progress. The audience will provide feedback. All final films will be screened on our October 27 at Wythe Hotel when one artist/scientist pair will be announced as the winner of the Symbiosis Film Competition.

The theme of this year's Symbiosis is (art)ificial. The films will also be made keeping in mind the Science New Wave movement/philosophy characterized by its rejection of traditional scientific film conventions and stereotypes in favor of experimentation and personal expression. Learn more at sciencenewwave.com
    SYMBIOSIS is supported by the Simons Foundation.

    The Simons Foundation's Science, Society and Culture division seeks to provide opportunities for people to forge a connection to science — whether for the first time or a lifetime. Through our initiatives, we work to inspire a feeling of awe and wonder, foster connections between people and science and support environments that provide a sense of belonging.

    Symbiosis animation from our friends at Rooftop Animation below!
    Made on
    Tilda