Joanna Maria Berzowska

With a Master of Science in Media Arts and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Joanna Maria Berzowska is an associate professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University. Her research focusses on electronic textiles, reactive garments and human generated power.

Her experimental creations, which are more like art or artistic performance than marketable product, have been shown in exhibitions around the world, notably at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Millennium Museum in Beijing.

For each project, she seeks not only to produce a reactive garment but also to explore the social, economic, environmental and political issues raised by this new reality.

In addition to her academic pursuits, Joanna Maria Berzowska is the Head of electronic textiles at OMsignal, a Montreal start-up specialized in biometric apparel. In this capacity, she collaborated with the American brand Ralph Lauren to develop the Polotech Shirt, an intelligent shirt that captures the vital signs and movements of athletes and transmits them to a mobile application for performance analysis.