Fiona Bell

Fiona Bell is an interdisciplinary engineer, researching sustainable biomaterials. Advised by Mirela Alistar, Fiona's research happens at the intersection of material science, biology, and design. Receiving a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Santa Clara University in 2019, she uses her technical background as a foundation to support her current creative work. As a PhD student, she hopes to create beautiful, functional, and sustainable products that bring value and joy to people.

Projects

• MyCo Domicilia
• SCOBY Breastplate
• Self-Cleaning Textiles
• "Lab Grade" Food
• Designing with Bioluminescence

Publications

Fiona Bell, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Biodegradation as More-than-Human Unmaking". In: ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (Volume 31, Issue 6), (December 2024).

Nadia Campo Woytuk, Fiona Bell, Joo Young Park, Mirela Alistar and Madeline Balaam. 2024. "A Plurality of More-than-Humanness: Feminist Speculations for Designing with the Vaginal Microbiome". In: Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium (HttF '24), (Santa Cruz, CA, October 21-23, 2024).

Katherine W Song, Fiona Bell, Himani Deshpande, Ilan Mandel, Tiffany Wun, Mirela Alistar, Leah Buechley, Wendy Ju, Jeeeun Kim, Eric Paulos, Samar Sabie and Ron Wakkary. 2024. "Sustainable Unmaking: Designing for Biodegradation, Decay, and Disassembly". In: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24), (Honolulu, HI, May 11–16, 2024).

Fiona Bell, Joshua Coffie and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Bio-Digital Calendar: Attuning to Nonhuman Temporalities for Multispecies Understanding". In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24), (Cork, Ireland, February 11-14, 2024).

Fiona Bell, Shanel Wu, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Mirela Alistar and Leah Buechley. 2024. "Making Biomaterials for Sustainable Tangible Interfaces". In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24), (Cork, Ireland, February 11-14, 2024).

Fiona Bell, Michelle Ramsahoye, Joshua Coffie, Julia Tung, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. “µMe: Exploring the Human Microbiome as an Intimate Material for Living Interfaces”. In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23), (Pittsburgh, PA, July 10–14, 2023).

Fiona Bell, Derrek Chow, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Laura Devendorf, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "Designing Interactions with Kombucha SCOBY". In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '23) (Warsaw, Poland, February 26 - March 1, 2023)​.  [Best Pictorial Award].

Fiona Bell, Derrek Chow, Hyelin Choi, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "SCOBY Breastplate: Slowly Growing a Microbial Interface". In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '23) (Warsaw, Poland, February 26 - March 1, 2023)​. 

Fiona Bell, Netta Ofer, Hyelin Choi, Ella McQuaid, Ethan Frier, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Biomaterial Playground: Engaging with Bio-based Materiality. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519875 (New Orleans, LA—April 29-May 5, 2022).

Fiona Bell, Netta Ofer, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. ReClaym our Compost: Biodegradable Clay for Intimate Making. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517711 (New Orleans, LA, USA—April 29-May 5, 2022). [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award]

Fiona Bell, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Alganyl: Cooking Sustainable Clothing. Diseña 20: Design and Somatic Sensibilities. Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.20.Article.4

Fiona Bell, Latifa Al-Naimi, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl. In Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3501308 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual) Feb. 13-16, 2022).

Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl: A Hands-on Exploration of Biodegradable Plastics. In Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 56, 1-5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3503669 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual)–Feb. 13-16, 2022).

Netta Ofer, Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Designing Direct Interactions with Bioluminescent Algae. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS ’21), June 28-July 2, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462090

Fiona Bell, Alice Hong, Andreea Danielescu, Aditi Maheshwari, Ben Greenspan, Hiroshi Ishii, Laura Devendorf, and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Self-deStaining Textiles: Designing Interactive Systems with Fabric, Stains and Light.  In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. (Yokohama, Japan (virtual)–May 8-13, 2021). pdf.

Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Alganyl. Patent No. US 63/184,992, Filed April 26th, 2021.

Fiona Bell. 2021. The Undyeing Swatch. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 86, 1–3. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3444704 (Salzburg, Austria (virtual) Feb. 14-19, 2021).