Q&A with...

Grace Chuang, Creative & Marketing Manager at Ginkgo Bioworks

BDC: Your job is Creative & Marketing Manager at Ginkgo Bioworks, one of the most well-known synthetic biology companies. That’s a fairly new position. Tell us about your role.

Grace Chuang: I’m a part of Ginkgo’s Creative Team where our goal is to use design and creativity to make a biological future easier to imagine. I think a lot about the visual imagination—what is the imagery we use to convey feelings, emotions, and stories? What creative direction should we take to get there? Practically, that means spending my days collaborating with lots of different types of people, including scientists, designers, photographers, videographers, artists, and creative agencies to communicate those ideas. I work on everything from art directing for Ginkgo’s magazine Grow to redesigning Ginkgo’s website to working with filmmakers to capture footage of our labs to discussing Ginkgo’s future building spaces with architects. I also develop Ginkgo’s brand, messaging, and culture.

BDC: You use the word “antidisciplinary” to describe yourself and your practice. We’d love to hear why.

GC: Actually, I have been thinking for a while about changing this, because antidisciplinary implies that the disciplines I work in are at odds with each other. And this isn’t true at all! A better word to describe myself and my practice would be co-disciplinary. Storytelling, art, design, and science are often pitted against each other as either/ors, things that cannot coexist. Rather than thinking of these as binaries (care vs. scale, people vs. profit, art vs. science), what if there was a way to come more towards the middle instead? What if there was a way to embrace the unstable equilibriums, or the messy in-betweens? I spent a lot of time in college trying to convince myself that I had to fit in one side or the other, before realizing I could do both—and I know there’s a lot of people out there who feel the same way. I believe there is magic in that in-between space, and that drives so much of the work that I do. 

BDC: What is the role of art, design, and imagination in synthetic biology?

GC: Synthetic biology is a design practice itself. We’re designing with nature, and that means we need to dream as big as possible—and art is one way that allows us to do that.  When I look at biology on the molecular level and consider all of its magical properties (self-replicating, self-assembling, self-renewing) I’m reminded that biology is the ultimate designer. 

On the human level, there’s a common misconception that the engineers and scientists who create new technologies are not also designers, which is not true. To design is to be human. We’re actually all designers! And that means a few things: one, all of us have the capacity to think critically about the technologies we use, and two, all of us have the responsibility to ensure that the things we build aren’t harmful to the communities around us. Design is also the design of society. Rather than treating art, design, and imagination as “fun” or superfluous, synthetic biologists must treat it as essential.

BDC: You’re a founding editor and the art director of the magazine GROW by Ginkgo. How do you imagine the magazine is influencing culture?

GC: We started GROW to tell creative stories about biology. It’s a space to highlight current endeavors, investigate neglected histories, and imagine collective biological futures. There are a lot of examples of how science fiction has predicted the future of technology. I’d like to think of GROW in a similar way, as the frontier to imagine synthetic biology’s future. More than that, it’s a place where we can critique the technologies we’re building, and hold ourselves accountable for the futures we’d like to see. It’s also a place where we can bring together diverse voices through writing and illustration, to help shape the future of synthetic biology. My favorite pieces range from a series of Pandemic Diaries we had written before the 2020 election, to a story about how modern art and beauty coevolved, to a mindblowing interview about whether DNA is hardware or software. We’re currently working on our third print edition, to be released in the fall, and I’m so excited for everyone to see it.

BDC: What is one biotech innovation you think will be used by everyone by 2071?

GC: I struggle with depression and anxiety, so mental health is something that is extremely important to me. I find the gut-brain axis and the probiotics space in general fascinating, and dream of a future where engineered bacteria can help cure illnesses. This is already happening—just take a look at the work Synlogic is doing for example—but by 2071 I think the possibilities will be endless. What if you could take an engineered probiotic that could help improve your mood?

BDC: What advice do you have for students who want to work at the intersection of art, design, and science, or in the “messy in-between,” as you’ve called it?

GC:  I remember the first time I met Christina Agapakis, who is Ginkgo’s creative director. I had reached out to set up a call, mostly because I was just starting to dabble in biodesign and wanted to figure out what it was like to work as a creative director at a biotech company. At that point, I had been feeling lost with my job search because I felt like I couldn’t fit into any of the boxes required in other job descriptions. I candidly expressed my frustration, and told her that people were telling me that in order to get to where she was, I needed to work at a job I didn’t like first. In classic Christina fashion, she responded with “Who told you that?”, and then asked me if I wanted to work at Ginkgo. 

Nowadays, a lot of people reach out to me because they are trying to figure out how to navigate the messy in-betweens as well. They feel alone, and often come saying that “someone told me I need to do X to get to Y”. When they do, I give them the same advice Christina gave me. “Who told you that?” I promise you, there is a world waiting out there where you don’t have to change yourself to fit in.

Resources Recommended by Grace:

Other Biological Futures from the Journal of Design and Science, curated by the lovely Natsai Audrey Chieza and Daisy Ginsberg! My two favorite conversations are between Christina Agapakis and Suzanne Lee, where they discuss pioneering biodesign at biotechnology companies, and Ahilapalapa Rands and Kiana Frank, where they discuss how Indigenous practices can shape our approach to biodesign. 

About Grace

Grace Chuang is a storyteller, designer, engineer, biologist, and photographer. As a core member of the Creative Team at Ginkgo Bioworks, she brings stories of synthetic biology to life through creative collaborations, and helps visualize a world where we design with nature to grow products. Grace received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering summa cum laude from Cornell University, where she spent her time coaxing mammalian cells, teaching design on iGEM, exploring biology with architects, producing films, and photographing stories of love, heartbreak, triumph, and failure. It’s there, with a pipette in one hand and a camera in the other, where she discovered a deep yearning to create with purpose and meaning, in the mess and the complexity. She’s been carving her own path at the intersection of things ever since.