This residency is hosted by the Department of Bioengineering with support from the Doerr School of Sustainability's Arts Programming and the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.
Events
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FALL
Bio-X Food@Stanford Seminar
FERMENT(N)ATION: From Microbes to Campus Communities with Mugaritz
The Bio-X Food@Stanford Seminars highlight innovative food-related research seeking to create nutritious, health-promoting, and sustainable food futures.
Thursday, October 30, 2025
4pm to 5pm
Clark Center, Clark Center Auditorium
Speakers
Ramón Perisé and Jordi Bross
From Mugaritz's approach, fermentation is not only a biological matter: it is a metaphor for transforming ingredients, ideas, and relationships, as well as a creative language for designing experiences with shared meaning. We will explore the essence of fermentation, how microbes inspire models of cooperation, and how those principles translate into bio-art-culinary scenarios (though workshops, installations, dinners, and other). We will integrate an aesthetics of sustainability, understood as a sensory and narrative choreography that, by staging tensions—local/foreign and clear/enigmatic—turns eaters into co-creators and therefore transforms the act of eating into a source of knowledge and culture. We’ll close with a practical framework to co-ferment projects from interdisciplinary approaches, going from the lab to the table—and viceversa.
Recorded Lecture
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FUTURE EVENTS
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SPRING
More information to come.
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About the Artist
Ramón Perisé is a culinary researcher, artist, and thinker whose work blends science, sensation, and storytelling across disciplines. He is head of Innovation and Development at Mugaritz, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant located in the Basque Country of Spain. Mugaritz is distinguished for its innovative approach to culinary art, combining creative gastronomic philosophy that blends cutting-edge culinary techniques with a deep respect for local ingredients and traditions.
Doerr Visiting Artist
Ramón Perisé will propose looking at fermentation as a living narrative that connects entire ecosystems in different scales—from the microbiome to campus communities—to learn what’s behind inherent processes like symbiosis, but also from values like collaboration, uncertainty, and time. Perisé’s activities will provide hands-on opportunities to engage with fermentation at a sensory, emotional level to push the status quo and spark meaningful conversations around food.
Articles about the residency:
Food, Agriculture, Fisheries & aquaculture: Feeding families in a warming world
Stanford researchers are studying how changing weather patterns, rising temperatures, and ecological shifts affect the global food system, while developing ways to improve food security for all.
Interested in learning more?
Vayu Hill-Maini
Hill-Mainu Lab
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Department of Bioengineering, Schools of Engineering and Medicine
vauhm@stanford.edu
Ellen Oh
Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Programs
Office of the Vice President for the Arts
ellenoh@stanford.edu
Emily Polk
Advanced Lecturer
Earth Systems Program, and Arts and Sustainability
Doerr School of Sustainability
empolk@stanford.edu
