Annie Chen is a Chinese-American designer, writer, and socioecological researcher based in Providence, RI. In a century of climate upheaval, her work examines how scientific ideas and environmental technologies — carrying the assumptions, ambitions, and imaginaries of their creators — encounter human and living systems across the climate transition. She works across field research, visual and narrative practices, and protopian speculation to develop new forms of collective sense-making between science, technology, and community life. A graduate of the Brown | RISD Dual Degree program, she holds a BA in Biology, a BA in Behavioral Decision Sciences, and a BFA in Industrial Design. She is currently a Research Affiliate at the Community Biotechnology Initiative at MIT Media Lab, and co-directs BEAM, a research-led creative studio and public imagination engine for people and planet. She is currently in the Y12 cohort of NEW INC, in the Creative Science track. Her work has been supported by NASA, NEW INC, the Simons Foundation, the Science History Institute, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Rhode Island Council for the Arts, MIT Media Lab, the Interlace Fund, and more. Her debut children’s book, Salmon Run, was published with Red Comet Press in 2025.
While at MacDowell, Chen and Zoe Lee developed TIDELANDS 2100, an immersive XR work and narrative game set along a future Rhode Island coastline transformed by sea level rise. During the residency, they focused on writing the game’s narrative arc from a first-person perspective, shaping a story of return, adaptation, and life beyond displacement. The project constructs a protopian climate future encountered through exploration, where evolving ecologies, community infrastructures, and emerging technologies are experienced as part of everyday life. In 2025, Chen and Lee were awarded the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Make Art Grant and the Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grant and completed residency at the Fish Factory Creative Centre in Iceland. They will be returning to the East Fjords for the Þórsmörk Residency Program in June 2026. They were also named fellows of the EY Intelligent Realities Lab. In 2026, Lee was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Chen and Lee presented TIDELANDS 2100 at the DEMO Festival at the New Museum in June 2026.
