Mirela Alistar

  • Assistant Professor
  • Living Matter Lab
  • BIOCHIPS, PERSONAL MEDICINE, DIY BIO
  • COMPUTER SCIENCE
  • ATLAS INSTITUTE
Address

ATLS 201C

Mirela (assistant professor, ATLAS Institute, Computer Science) investigates the extent to which we can change healthcare to make it a personal process. Her research focuses around microfluidic biochips, devices that enable direct interaction of humans with their microbiome for diagnosis purposes. So far Mirela has built systems based on biochips to serve as personal laboratories: small portable devices that people can own and use to develop customized bio-protocols ("bio-apps"). 

Mirela is an active contributor to the DIYBio movement, having led and co-founded community wetlabs. In this context, she organizes interactive performances, art installations and open workshops, in order to engage the public in direct interaction with living materials (e.g., bacteria, viruses, fungi).

Mirela received her PhD from the Technical University of Denmark in 2014, and until 2018, she was a postdoc in Patrick Baudish's lab at Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany. Mirela’s work is published in top-tier journals and conferences (IEEE TCAD) and has been demonstrated at venues such as IEEE ESWeek and Molecular Communications. Mirela has served as a guest editor for Current Biotechnology journal (CBNT) and as a reviewer for venues such as Applied Materials and Interfaces, DATE, TCAD, ToDAES, NanoCom and UIST.

Outreach: Engaging Underrepresented Students (funded by Google exploreCSR)

Projects

Publications

Aditi Maheshwari, Fiona Bell, Eric Gallo, Mihai Ibanescu, Emily Robertson, Charlotte Fairless, Francis Logan, Mary Jane Schmuhl, Henry Cheung, Michael Rein, Andreea Danielescu, Mirela Alistar. 2025. "Self-Cleaning Textiles for Publicly Shared Soft Surfaces: An Accessible and Scalable Photocatalytic Polyester System with Embedded Light-Emitting Diodes". In: ACS Omega. (January 23, 2025).

Fiona Bell, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Biodegradation as More-than-Human Unmaking". In: ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (Volume 31, Issue 6), (December 2024).

Nadia Campo Woytuk, Fiona Bell, Joo Young Park, Mirela Alistar and Madeline Balaam. 2024. "A Plurality of More-than-Humanness: Feminist Speculations for Designing with the Vaginal Microbiome". In: Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium (HttF '24), (Santa Cruz, CA, October 21-23, 2024).

Mirela Alistar, Latifa Al-Naimi, Sepideh Mohammadi, Shira David, Julia Tung and Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez. 2024. "Exploring the Affordances of Bio-Electronic Nails". In: Companion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '24), (Melbourne, Australia, October 5-9, 2024).

Dreycey Albin, Michelle Ramsahoye, Eitan Kochavi and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "PhageScanner: a reconfigurable machine learning framework for bacteriophage genomic and metagenomic feature annotation". In: FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY, (September 16, 2024).

Netta Ofer and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Tracing as a Strategy for Orienting to Nonhuman Perspectives". In: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24), (Copenhagen, Denmark, July 1-5, 2024).

Latifa Al-Naimi and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Understanding Cultural and Religious Values Relating to Awareness of Women’s Intimate Health among Arab Muslims". In: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24), (Honolulu, HI, May 11–16, 2024).

Katherine W Song, Fiona Bell, Himani Deshpande, Ilan Mandel, Tiffany Wun, Mirela Alistar, Leah Buechley, Wendy Ju, Jeeeun Kim, Eric Paulos, Samar Sabie and Ron Wakkary. 2024. "Sustainable Unmaking: Designing for Biodegradation, Decay, and Disassembly". In: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24), (Honolulu, HI, May 11–16, 2024).

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Mirela Alistar, Laura Devendorf, and Michael L. Rivera. 2024. Desktop Biofibers Spinning: An Open-Source Machine for Exploring Biobased Fibers and Their Application Towards Sustainable Smart Textile Design. In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), (Honolulu, HI, May 11–16, 2024).

Fiona Bell, Joshua Coffie and Mirela Alistar. 2024. "Bio-Digital Calendar: Attuning to Nonhuman Temporalities for Multispecies Understanding". In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24), (Cork, Ireland, February 11-14, 2024).

Fiona Bell, Shanel Wu, Nadia Campo Woytuk, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Mirela Alistar and Leah Buechley. 2024. "Making Biomaterials for Sustainable Tangible Interfaces". In: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '24), (Cork, Ireland, February 11-14, 2024).

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Lily M Gabriel, Mikhaila Friske, Shanel Wu, Sasha De Koninck, Laura Devendorf, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "Designing Dissolving Wearables". In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2023 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing & the 2023 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (UbiComp/ISWC '23 Adjunct). (October 08, 2023).

Dreycey Albin, Lukas Buecherl, Eitan Kochavi, Elise Niehaus, Sasha Novack, Shenali Uragoda, Chris J. Myers, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "PhageBox: An Open Source Digital Microfluidic Extension with Applications for Phage Discovery". In: IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. (July 14, 2023).

Fiona Bell, Michelle Ramsahoye, Joshua Coffie, Julia Tung, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. “µMe: Exploring the Human Microbiome as an Intimate Material for Living Interfaces”. In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23), (Pittsburgh, PA, July 10–14, 2023).

Netta Ofer and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "Felt Experiences with Kombucha Scoby: Exploring First-person Perspectives with Living Matter". In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany, April 23-28, 2023).

Fiona Bell, Derrek Chow, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Laura Devendorf, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "Designing Interactions with Kombucha SCOBY". In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '23) (Warsaw, Poland, February 26 - March 1, 2023)​.  [Best Pictorial Award]

Fiona Bell, Derrek Chow, Hyelin Choi, and Mirela Alistar. 2023. "SCOBY Breastplate: Slowly Growing a Microbial Interface". In: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '23) (Warsaw, Poland, February 26 - March 1, 2023)​. 

Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez, Netta Ofer, Shanel Wu, Mary Etta West, Mirela Alistar and Laura Devendorf. 2022. Exploring Biofoam as a Material for Tangible Interaction. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’22), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1525-1529. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533494 (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia). 

Fiona Bell, Netta Ofer, Hyelin Choi, Ella McQuaid, Ethan Frier, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Biomaterial Playground: Engaging with Bio-based Materiality. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519875 (New Orleans, LA—April 29-May 5, 2022).

Fiona Bell, Netta Ofer, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. ReClaym our Compost: Biodegradable Clay for Intimate Making. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517711 (New Orleans, LA, USA—April 29-May 5, 2022) [Best Paper Honorable Mention Award].

Fiona Bell, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Alganyl: Cooking Sustainable Clothing. Diseña 20: Design and Somatic Sensibilities. Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.20.Article.4

Fiona Bell, Latifa Al-Naimi, Ella McQuaid, and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl. In Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3501308 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual) Feb. 13-16, 2022).

Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2022. Designing with Alganyl: A Hands-on Exploration of Biodegradable Plastics. In Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 56, 1-5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3503669 (Daejeon, Republic of Korea (virtual)–Feb. 13-16, 2022).

Purnendu, Sasha M Novack, Eric Acome, Christoph Keplinger, Mirela Alistar, Mark D Gross, Carson Bruns, and Daniel Leithinger. 2021. Electriflow: Soft Electrohydraulic Building Blocks for Prototyping Shape-changing Interfaces. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1280–1290. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462093 (June 28-July 2, 2021–Virtual Event).

Netta Ofer, Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Designing Direct Interactions with Bioluminescent Algae. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (DIS ’21), June 28-July 2, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462090

Fiona Bell, Alice Hong, Andreea Danielescu, Aditi Maheshwari, Ben Greenspan, Hiroshi Ishii, Laura Devendorf, and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Self-deStaining Textiles: Designing Interactive Systems with Fabric, Stains and Light. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. (Yokohama, Japan (virtual)–May 8-13, 2021). pdf.

Timothy Merritt, Foad Hamidi, Mirela Alistar & Marta DeMenezes (2020) Living media interfaces: a multi-perspective analysis of biological materials for interaction, Digital Creativity, 31:1, 1-21, DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2019.1707231.

Fiona Bell and Mirela Alistar. 2021. Alganyl. Patent No. US 63/184,992, Filed April 26th, 2021.

Mirela Alistar and Margherita Pevere. 2020. Semina Aeternitatis: Using Bacteria for Tangible Interaction with Data. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3381817 (Honolulu, Hawaii (virtual)–April 25-30, 2020).

Timothy Merritt, Foad Hamidi, Mirela Alistar & Marta DeMenezes (2020) Living media interfaces: a multi-perspective analysis of biological materials for interaction, Digital Creativity, 31:1, 1-21, DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2019.1707231.

Mirela Alistar, 2019. Mobile microfluidics. Bioengineering Journal. DOI: [10.3390/bioengineering6010005] 

Mirela Alistar, Urs Gaudenz. 2017. OpenDrop: An Integrated Do-It-Yourself Platform for Personal Use of Biochips. Bioengineering Journal.

Mirela Alistar, Paul Pop, Jan Madsen. 2016. Synthesis of application-specific fault-tolerant digital microfluidic biochip architectures. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), 764-777.

Alexandra Ion, Johannes Frohnhofen, Mirela Alistar, Ludwig Wall, Jack Lindsay, Pedro Lopes, Hsiang-Ting Chen, Patrick Baudisch. 2016. Metamaterial Mechanisms. Proc. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST’16), 529-539. [Honorable Mention Award].

Paul Pop, Mirela Alistar, Elena Stuart, Jan Madsen. Fault-tolerant digital microfluidic biochips. Springer 2016.