--- title: "Angelo Vermeulen" chunk: 1/2 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Vermeulen" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" date_saved: "2026-05-05T12:58:02.414665+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- Angelo Vermeulen (born 1971, Sint Niklaas) is a Belgian space systems researcher, biologist and artist. In 2009 he co-founded SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Designs), an international transdisciplinary collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and activists Its goal is to reshape the future through critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. Biomodd is one of their most well-known art projects and consists of a worldwide series of co-created interactive art installations in which computers coexist with internal living ecosystems. For the last ten years, he has been collaborating with the European Space Agency’s MELiSSA program on biological life support for space and in 2013 he was crew commander of one of the NASA-funded HI-SEAS Mars mission simulations in Hawai'i. Currently, he works at Delft University of Technology on advanced concepts for interstellar exploration. His work proposes a bio-inspired design approach to deal with the unpredictability inherent to interstellar travel. He is a Senior TED Fellow and was selected in 2017 as one of the Top 5 Tech Pioneers from Belgium by the newspaper De Tijd. == Academic career == In 1998 Vermeulen completed his PhD on mouthpart deformities in non-biting midge larvae at the biology department of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. In that same year he also graduated from the Municipal Academy of Fine Arts in Leuven, where he studied photography. Vermeulen left Belgium to work in London as a photographer together with Nick Waplington. After his return to Belgium in 2001, he attended a two-year post-academic course at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Belgium. This became the starting point of an exploration to try and find out how biology and ecological processes can interact in art and how to materialize them as art installations. From 2011 to 2012 he was a member of the European Space Agency Topical Team Arts & Science (ETTAS) In 2012 he was a Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design Fellow at Parsons School of Design in New York. He also held positions at LUCA School of Visual Arts in Ghent (Belgium) and Die Angewandte in Vienna (Austria) and has been (guest) faculty at universities across Europe, the US, and Southeast Asia. In 2011 Vermeulen started research on advanced concepts for interstellar exploration at Systems Engineering and Simulation at Delft University of Technology. == SEADS == Angelo Vermeulen is co-founder of Space Ecologies Art and Design (SEADS), a transdisciplinary and cross-cultural collective of artists, scientists, engineers and activists. Its members come from all corners of the world, from places such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Kosovo, Belgium and the US. SEADS is actively engaged in deconstructing dominant paradigms about the future and develops alternative models through a combination of critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. Over the past years, the collective has created a range of paradigm-shifting projects in which different domains such as visual art, neuroscience, ecology and space technology are blended in unique ways. SEADS employs its own signature methodology which is centered around community building, co-creation and bottom-up design. Since 2009, the collective has co-created more than 40 art projects, together with local communities in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. == Selected Art Projects == === Biomodd (2007-Ongoing) === Conceived in 2007 during a four-month residency at the ‘Aesthetic Technologies Lab’ in Athens, Ohio, Biomodd is a collaborative, community-based art installation comprising works involving symbiotic relations between plants and computers. For example, one project involved using algae to cool computer processors so that these could run faster, while at the same time the heat generated by the computer electronics improved the algae's ability to grow. The exhibition has since traveled to the Philippines, Slovenia, New Zealand, Belgium, New York (US), Chile, the Netherlands and London (Great Britain). === Merapi Terraforming Project (2011) === The Merapi Terraforming Project is an art-science project on the Merapi volcano in Indonesia was set up after a large eruption in 2010. The Merapi Terraforming Project used nitrogen-fixing bacteria to help grow legumes in a structure on the flanks of the volcano as both an experiment in food production and a monument to the traumatic past of the location. The project illustrates how art, astrobiology and social outreach can be combined to address real-world issues on Earth. === Seeker (2012 - Ongoing) === Seeker is a DIY spaceship model which experiments with the integration of the technological, ecological and social systems that enable long-term survival in a spaceship. Vermeulen started the first edition of Seeker (DV1) in response to the Witteveen+Bos Art+Technology award he won in 2012. The designing and making of Seeker was a collaboration between Witteveen+Bos engineers, local artists, independent volunteers and the artist as inspirer/connector. The spaceship was exhibited in autumn 2012 in the Bergkerk church in Deventer, the Netherlands. By the end of the exhibition, Seeker became partly demolished and re-used for a second edition during the Space Odyssey 2.0-exhibition in Z33 in Hasselt (Belgium). Several months before the opening of the exhibition, Vermeulen launched an open call for ideas and participation on Seeker (HS2). The outward construction was unaltered, but the interior changed depending on the needs and priorities of the new crew. Although Vermeulen and Matilda Krzykowski share their leadership over the crew, there is no hierarchy in the process of realizing the work. Seeker is primarily a community project in which a tiny, isolating room is created to provide the best possible conditions for a particular group of inhabitants. Seeker developed itself as a traveling project with always new groups of participants.