Dhairya Dand is an award – winning inventor and artist who runs ODD Industries a futurist factory+lab in NYC. His work investigates the human body as a medium for computation, he designs materials as tools to embody interactions and design as a vehicle for mindfulness.

Past inventions include: bio reactive architecture, elastic computer screens, shape changing gadgets, shoes that tickle and guide, alcohol aware ice cubes, synthetic muscles, programmable hair, emotionally intelligent flowers, sensory apparatus for music learning and educational toys from eWaste, optically invisible fibre-optics among others.

Dhairya has been recognised twice in the Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ list in the ‘Design’ and ‘Manufacturing and Industry’ category, WIRED Innovation Fellow, INK Fellow, FoST Fellow, ELLE’s ‘Names to know in 2015’, VOGUE’s ‘Cool People’ list, Globe’s ‘Top 25 Innovators’ list.

He is on the Advisory board of the XPRIZE Foundation and he is also a member of the W3C standards committee. Previously he was a futurist at Concept Lab, researcher at MIT Media Lab, toy designer in Singapore, sensory researcher in Tokyo, a toy designer in Phnom Penh, and activist and researcher in Singapore and a social-political entrepreneur/researcher in Bombay.

He holds a master’s degree in Media, Arts and Sciences from MIT, where he studied at the Media Lab with Pattie Maes (Fluid Interfaces Group), Henry Holtzman (Information Ecology Group) and was advised by Jun Rekimoto (University of Tokyo/Sony CSL), Ethan Zuckerman (Civic Media) and Philipp Schmidt (P2PU).

He has taught semester-long studio-focused graduate courses at the Art Institute and several week-long innovation workshops with the MIT Media Lab Initiative of which he is also the Founding Director.

Recent exhibitions at the V&A, Tokyo Design Week, MIT Museum.