MY STORY:

Hello, I’m Louisa!

I am an artist, inventor, public speaker, and engineer and I pull inspiration from the space between art and science. I have spoken at conferences about my work and life experiences: I've been on fire twice, slept on plywood in Tibet, been lost in the Andes, built life sized dinosaurs out of car parts, and generally ran amuck in makers spaces, and I very miraculous start. 

I was born four months early and weighed only one pound, a micro-preemie. At the time there was only a 1% chance of me surviving without any critical disabilities and the future seemed grim. I was extremely lucky to have survived and I try to take the good fortune I was granted as an infant and give back to the world at every opportunity.  

Dad and I in the NICU - 1997

Growing up, my parents  were committed to raising my brother, sister and I as “citizens of the world”. To that end, they made sure that we all carry two passports - we have both Irish and American citizenship - and they began traveling abroad with us when we were old enough to carry our own backpacks - age four. By the age of 20 I had been to 27 countries.

Because of my parent‘s work, we never traveled to normal tourist destinations. We were roaming around places like the IRA headquarters in Belfast Northern Ireland, wildlife refuges in the Kalahari Desert, paddling the rivers of the Czech Republic, and playing soccer with children in an orphanage in Quito Ecuador!

As my parents were shaping my siblings and I into world travelers, they were also nurturing in us a continual love of science. I never quite understood the finer point of dressing and re-dressing Barbie dolls so on my birthdays I received countless small robotics kits, chemistry sets, and anatomy models. Even now as I write at our kitchen counter there is the skull of an ermine, a three-foot long snakeskin, a mummified brown bat, and an ostrich egg hanging above my head.

Art, as well as science, has been a big part of my life. Since the age of 12 I have been welding metal sculptures out of found objects, tools and old farm equipment. Over the past nine years I have donated the bulk of my work to charity auctions across the state and they have raised over $21,000 for numerous great causes. I've also donated large scale sculptures to my town's public library and town hall, and I'm currently working on a life-sized, 18-foot-tall pterosaur. 

Somewhere along the way my creative spark lead me to forge my own path through high school. This allowed me to pursue my twin passions of art and science while also participating as a normal student in advanced placement classes. This novel path lead to opportunities to travel, speak publicly about my work, and eventually to leave high school with a patent pending wind turbine design. 

I was a finalist and participant of 2019’s Biomimicry Launchpad and returned as a coach and mentor for the 2020 cohort. My–now patented–design, the Undula Generator, is a cuttlefish-inspired turbine that could revolutionize the world of small-scale decentralized wind and hydropower generation. My work was featured in the year-long exhibit Learning from Nature: The Future of Design at the Museum of Design Atlanta. 

Now a days I’m working as a product development engineer, and passing on my passion for science and art through volunteering and teaching!