Imaginary College
The Imaginary College is a group of outstanding creative thinkers, researchers, practitioners, and mad geniuses that represents one of the core missions of the Center for Science and the Imagination: to seek out intelligent life wherever it resides in the universe, and to get it on our side. Through the Imaginary College, CSI partners with and celebrates the individuals and groups who are already advancing our mission of fresh, creative and ambitious thinking about the future.
Imaginary College Fellows
Rebels, hackers, wizards, inventors, and alchemists driving pathbreaking research, teaching and outreach projects.
Madeline Ashby - Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer, futurist, speaker, teacher, and immigrant living in Toronto. She has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, The Atlantic Council, the Center for Science and the Imagination, Changeist, [...]
Kevin Bankston - Kevin Bankston is the Director of New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), where he works in the public interest to ensure that all communities have access to communications technologies that are both open and secure. He previously served as OTI’s Policy [...]
Michael Bennett - Michael G. Bennett is an associate research professor in Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the Center for Science and the Imagination, and the Risk Innovation Lab, as well as a Lecturer in the Sandra Day O’Connor College [...]
Laura Cechanowicz - Laura Cechanowicz joins the School of Arts, Media and Engineering as an assistant professor, jointly appointed with the graphic information technology program in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Cechanowicz
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay - Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is senior researcher at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, where he works on Climate Fiction, Quantum Fiction, and Medical Science Fiction within the Lifetimes framework.[...]
Brenda Cooper - Brenda Cooper is the author of nine science fiction and fantasy books. Her most recent novels are POST (Espec Books, 2016) and Spear of Light (Pyr, 2016). Her other works include Edge of Dark (Pyr, 2015), The Creative Fire (Pyr, 2012), and The Diamond Deep (Pyr, 2013) as [...]
Leopoldo Gout - Leopoldo Gout is a filmmaker, writer and visual artist who hails from Mexico City. The author of Ghost Radio and the Genius series, Gout is also a successful film and television producer. Gout is currently partnered with James Patterson on projects including Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life [...]
Andrew Dana Hudson - Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, and futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, as well as over twenty short stories appearing in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Escape Pod, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and many more. His nonfiction has appeared in Slate, Jacobin, and more. [...]
Suren Jayasuriya - Suren Jayasuriya is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. Before this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. [...]
Brian David Johnson - Brian David Johnson is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and a Futurist and Fellow at Frost & Sullivan, a visionary innovation company [...]
Robert LiKamWa - Robert LiKamWa is an associate professor at Arizona State University, appointed in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE).
Deji Bryce Olukotun - Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of two novels and his fiction has appeared in five different book collections. His novel After the Flare won the 2018 Philip K. Dick special citation award, and was chosen as one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian [...]
Vandana Singh - Vandana Singh was born and raised in India and currently lives in the Boston area, where she is a professor of physics at Framingham State University, and a science fiction writer. Although her Ph.D. is in particle physics, in recent years she has [...]
Zoyander Street - Dr. Zoyander Street (they/them) is a neuroqueer and disabled writer, researcher, and digital artist. They live and work in the "People's Republic of South Yorkshire," England, creating interactive media [...]Imaginary College Philosophers
Sages and provocateurs who epitomize imaginative thinking and practice and provide inspiration for our work.
Paolo Bacigalupi - Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative. 
Kim Stanley Robinson - “Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.” 
Neal Stephenson - “See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places." 
Bruce Sterling - “Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.” Alumni
Former fellows, now changing the world from other coordinates.