Biography
Melissa Sterry, PhD, PGCert, BA (Hons), CSci, FIScT, FDRS, FRSA
Design scientist and systems theorist Melissa Sterry is recognised as a world-leading authority on the science, technology, design, and thinking that could help humanity to build a better world. Primarily working with projects that chart unprecedented conceptual, creative, and commercial potentialities, including several first-to-market start-ups, Melissa has extensive experience of working with leading-edge ideas, individuals, and institutions worldwide.
Over the years, Melissa has garnered numerous accolades for her contributions. She is the recipient of several national and international awards for innovation, creativity, and enterprise, including the Woman Icon of the Year Award (overseas) in the International Inspirational Women Awards (2024) and the Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award for enhancing intelligence that benefits society (2010). Recognised as a 40 over 40 ‘Women to Watch’ honouree, she was also listed among the Libertine 100—one hundred women with world-changing ideas—and inducted into the Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network ‘Hall of Fame.’
A chartered scientist with the Science Council, fellow of the Institute of Science and Technology, of the Design Research Society, and the Royal Society of Arts, and member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars [US], and the Design Council expert network, in addition to a PhD in designing wildland urban interface resilience to wildfires and other complex natural hazards through ecological systems thinking and mimicry of plant species and ecosystems that have evolved to live with wildfire from the University of Greenwich, London [2018], Melissa's qualifications include a Postgraduate Certificate with Commendation in Innovation and Enterprise from Kingston University London [2009], and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours and Commendation for her final year thesis in Design Practice from the University of Salford, Greater Manchester [1996].
Since 2010, Melissa has conducted extensive transdisciplinary research into the potential for building resilience to major meteorological, geological, and ecological disruptions through the mimicry of the biochemistries, behaviours, structures, relationships and systems of species that have evolved to live with these events. Together with copious literary reviews, her research has incorporated field trips in the United Kingdom, Europe, United States, and Asia; interviews with world-leading experts across multiple fields of science, engineering, design, and technology; experiments in the field and in the lab; and as relates to hazards including wildfires, aridity, heatwaves, flooding, debris flows, high winds, eruptions, and earthquakes. Outputs include her PhD, which completed at the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group in London, posits a radical new architectural and urban design paradigm for the wildland urban interface, of which the thesis and its legacy research and publishing works are shared through her digital open access project Panarchic Codex® [est. 2018]. In addition to her ongoing research on building resilience to wildfires though the development of a school of architectural thought she has named Panarchistic Architecture, Melissa is also studying desert ecologies to create architectural and urban design concepts which mimic species that have evolved to live with high heat and low rainfall. Both seminal concepts, she has coined the terms Pyrophytic Architecture and Xerophytic Architecture to describe the new classes of architecture she is developing for living with wildfires and living with aridity respectively.
Melissa is the founder/director of London-based biofuturism and bioinnovation consultancy Bioratorium® [Est. 2019], its lab Labioratorium®, and of Bionic City® [Est. 2010], which asking “how would nature design a city?", and the world’s first biofutures boutique consultancy, explores the potential of biodesign, biomimetics, and biotechnology in the built environments of the now, near and far future. Developing original research, concepts and creative works, Bionic City® has attracted a global community of interest and collaborated and co-created with partners across multiple cutting-edge disciplines worldwide. Having produced her first project in the field of biomaterials while still an undergraduate in the 1990s [the first apparel collection designed to safely biodegrade back into the environment at the end of use - anticipating the concept that would later become known as ‘cradle-to-cradle design’] Melissa has 25+ years experience in researching and developing original biomaterial, bioinformatic, and bio-inspired concepts in textiles, fashion, architecture, construction, urban planning, and infrastructure. In addition to her wider activities in design and design research, she has recently launched Biotique® - collections of British-made luxury soft furnishings, dining ware, stationary, and accessories featuring surface pattern designs she has created using some of the several hundred microscopic images she has taken in the course of her years of study of plants and other members of the Kingdoms of Life. Made-on-demand using manufacturing processes that reduce material and ink wastage to an absolute minimum, her collections are inspired by the beauty of the natural world.
A graduate of the world's first interdisciplinary design bachelors degree course [1996], she started her career working with both traditional analogue and emerging digital design and communications media, founding her first business within a year of graduation. She has further founded and directed several high-profile creative projects throughout her career, including award-winning sustainability think tank and collaborative laboratory Societás [2004 - 2010]; award-winning catalyst for rapid innovation in sustainable design for the built environment, New Frontiers [2008 - 2010]; and the world's first online visual arts awards - the Creative Graduate Prize - for photography, painting, illustration, and installation art [2004 - 2010] and the Iconique Societás Awards - for fashion photography, illustration, styling, and art direction [2007 - 2010]. Earlier responsibilities include executive board roles with the world’s first online events industry network, with the world’s first online private members club, and with a full-service design agency, among others. She has also held several non-executive and other senior advisory roles to pioneering sustainable and ethical start-ups and initiatives throughout her career, including most recently sitting on the advisory board of UK biodesign company Full Grown - the first company to literally grow furniture in an orchard.
In addition to her work as an independent scientist, her past and present academic activities include visiting lecturer, visiting fellow, workshop host, Masters thesis supervisor, guest critic, external examiner, peer-reviewer, and assembly and scientific committee member at several leading European architecture, built environment, and design research institutes and organisations, including The Bartlett at University College London, Central Saint Martins and London College of Communications at University of the Arts London, University of Innsbruck, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia [IAAC], Architectural Association School of Architecture, Ravensbourne, University of Greenwich, and the University of Salford, among several others. Her wider affiliations include guest professor with Professors Without Borders.
One of the world’s most high profile futurists, Melissa also consults to both executive-level private and public sector clients globally. Specialising in creating sustainable, resilient, circular, and regenerative futures in the built environment, utilities, manufacturing, engineering, design, publishing, media and communications, she has contributed to groundbreaking projects and publications as far and wide as the United States, South and South East Asia, United Kingdom, and Europe. Her experience encompasses authoring white papers and other publications, delivering executive board advisories, curating educational experiences and learning programmes, designing speculative concepts, and project mentoring and leadership. Her past clients include among others Toyota Motor Corporation, Unilever, Virgin group, Vodafone group, Hershey's, Grosvenor, SUEZ group, easyJet, and leading global trends agencies, including Studio IntO. She has been credited as being a top 20 global futurist by leading innovation intelligence platform Springwise, and ranked in the top 30 women futurists and top 100 most influential futurists worldwide in the Futurist Influence Rankings list.
Regularly featured throughout the media, Melissa is published in over sixty international trade, consumer and academic titles and had her work featured in over four hundred and fifty more, including several national newspapers in the United Kingdom, Europe, United States, and Australia. She has participated in wide-ranging media productions for film, television, radio and internet, including podcasts, to-camera interviews, fly-on-the-wall documentaries, presenting, and both live and pre-recorded radio interviews. Past assignments include being a featured expert and media figurehead in Interface's 'Beautiful Thinking' campaign; technology figurehead for The Guardian ‘The Future Designed Around You’ supplement, sponsored by Volvo; in conversation on future cities with Neil deGrasse Tyson for Star Talk radio; and presenting 'Leonardo's City' for BBC Radio 4. Melissa has further contributed in the capacity of editor-in-chief, guest editor, editorial board member and curator to several digital and print design, architecture, urban, arts, and style books and magazines worldwide.
To date, Melissa has contributed as keynote speaker, panelist and/or panel chair at more than a hundred leading international conferences, seminars, festivals, awards ceremonies, and product launches in regions including Europe, Northern America, South and South East Asia, Australasia, and Russia, for clients including World Bank, Unilever, Interface, McKinsey, Schneider Electric, Balfour Beatty, Ministry of Defence, Manchester International Festival, Edinburgh International Science Festival, University of Oxford's Climate Forum, and University of Cambridge's Festival of Ideas, among many more. In 2024 she was voted one of the world’s Top 20 speakers shaping the future at board-level globally on the issue of sustainability in a poll of several hundred clients by the sector’s leading speaker agency.
