ZOE MIYAKO LEE
zoemiyako@gmail.comare.nainstagram
Zoe Lee is a designer, entreprenuer, researcher, and filmmaker based in the United States. After receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she co-founded BEAM, a research-led creative studio and public imagination engine for people & planet.
She is also a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative and a member of NEW INC, the New Museum’s design, culture, and tech incubator, in the Year 12 Creative Science cohort.
Her work focuses on how climate technologies and interventions operate once they move into real places—shaped by ecological conditions, governance, culture, and lived relationships to land and water. Her practice blends research, design, and storytelling to make complex socio-ecological systems legible and negotiable.
Her work has been published and presented internationally, and has appeared in Vox, MIT Technology Review, ArtNews, The Today Show, O! Magazine, Stereo Saints, and Barley Field Magazine.
CV
GROWING COMMUNITY POWER
GROWING COMMUNITY POWER
Reserach Affiliate
Team: Annie Chen, Dr. David S. Kong, Zoe Lee, Zion Michael
Institution:
MIT Media Lab
Partners: Revive & Restore, Parley for the Oceans, Harvard Kennedy School, Practicing Democracy Project, Coral Gardeners, One People One Reef, Alligator Head Foundation
DESCRIPTION
As coral reefs rapidly die in warming waters, new biotechnologies are racing to save them — from probiotics to gene-edited corals. But most never leave the lab. Without ways to partner with the communities who permit and steward reef ecosystems, critical interventions stall before they reach the ocean.
With the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative, we developed a Sociotechnical Toolkit for listening, mapping relationships, and organizing collective action in conservation. To share these methods broadly, we built Growing Community Power — a Webflow site that makes the tools accessible to the scientific community and adaptable for real-world use. More than a manual, it’s a resource for integrating trust-building into research and deployment.
Growing Community Power will launch online in winter 2025, offering scientists an open-access platform for applying these methods in their own work. Field deployment begins in Jamaica and Micronesia in 2026, with continued development through the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to link local practice with global governance.