Ellen Pearlman is a New York based media artist, curator, writer and critic.

A Research Fellow at MIT, she is also a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA University in Latvia, and on faculty at Parsons/New School.

Ellen is the Director of ThoughtWorks Arts, a global research and innovation lab that includes the well regarded ThoughtWorks ArtsResidency.

An EU Vertigo STARTS Laureate (Horizon 2020), she is a Fulbright World Learning Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology, a Zero1 American Arts Incubator/U.S. State Department cultural envoy to Kyiv, Ukraine, and a Fulbright Alumni Ties grantee.

Ellen received her Ph.D. in Digital Media from the School of Creative Media at Hong Kong City University where she premiered her brain opera “Noor”, a fully immersive interactive brainwave opera at ISEA Hong Kong and the Microwave International Festival, HK. Her PhD thesis, “Is There A Place In Human Consciousness Where Surveillance Cannot Go?” was awarded highest global ranking from Leonardo LABS abstracts. “AIBO”, an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligent brainwave opera premiered at the Estonian Music Academy’s state of the art black box theater, in collaboration with the Estonian Academy of Art and the Human Computer Interaction Lab at Tallinn University.

Ellen is also President of Art-A-Hack(TM), Director and Curator of the New York Volumetric Society, and a contributing editor to Performance Arts Journal (PAJ) MIT Press.