Congratulating Sue Huang, Inaugural Rutgers–New Brunswick Laureate

May 14, 2025

Dear Rutgers–New Brunswick Community,

I am proud to announce that Assistant Professor Sue Huang has been named the inaugural Rutgers–New Brunswick Laureate, a position she will hold through the 2025-26 academic year while creating an intriguing new artistic work that will engage speculative design, sci-fi worldbuilding, and cross-disciplinary research to explore extinction and ecological loss resulting from climate change.

The Office of the Provost created the Rutgers–New Brunswick Laureate Program this year to elevate the arts and humanities across our institution and the broader community. Each year, the program will designate and empower a new laureate to foster deeper cross-disciplinary connections with the arts and humanities. The laureate’s work will help fulfill the goals and objectives of our Academic Master Plan and its four pillars of Scholarly Leadership, Innovative Research, Student Success, and Community Engagement.

Professor Huang is an Assistant Professor of Art & Design at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, with research specialties in ecological intimacies, human/nonhuman relations, and speculative futures. Her primary methodologies employ computational processes, performance, and cross-disciplinary approaches that bridge the arts and sciences. Her recent research has focused on multimedia performance as a means of deepening understanding of ecological relationships and scientific inquiry. This work has been presented at The Tech Interactive IMAX with SynBioBeta in San Jose and MAXmachina in New York, and is forthcoming at the 2025 BDC Summit, hosted at the Titus Theater at MoMA in New York.

Professor Huang will develop her laureate project, Bodies of Flora, over the coming academic year, with plans to exhibit and present the work to the community in Spring 2026. The project explores botanical loss and the potential for resurrecting vanished flora within the cultural imagination through performance. As a work of interdisciplinary research and creativity, the project invites collaboration between multiple units at Rutgers–New Brunswick: the Mason Gross School of the Arts’ Department of Art & Design, and the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences’ Chrysler Herbarium and Department of Plant Biology. 

Professor Huang’s proposal stood out for its innovative integration of the arts and sciences and plan to unite plant biology, artificial intelligence, 3D modeling, and visual design to explore ecological change across New Jersey. The project reflects the spirit of the Laureate Program by merging academic inquiry with public engagement and creating space for cross-campus and cross-community dialogue.

The Laureate selection committee noted the project’s potential to connect students and faculty across departments and to create new opportunities for community-based learning and expression. Bodies of Flora will also highlight underrecognized regional ecologies, offering a compelling example of how creative research can help surface new perspectives on climate, place, and the environment.

Please join me in congratulating Professor Huang—and in thanking all of the faculty who submitted proposals for this year’s first-ever Laureate Program. The quality of the applications demonstrates the extraordinary depth of public-facing scholarship at Rutgers–New Brunswick. We are excited to support Professor Huang’s work in the year ahead and look forward to sharing more about her project as it develops.

Sincerely,

Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, Ph.D.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Rutgers University–New Brunswick