Katia Vega, assistant professor of design, is part of the team whose project, The Dermal Abyss: When Tattoos meet Biotechnology, is among the finalists for an Interactive Innovation Award. Nominated in the Scifi No Longer category, Vega collaborated with team members from MIT Media Lab and Harvard Medical School. 

The winner will be announced at the SXSW Conference in Austin, TX, on March 13. 

The DermalAbyss project is the result of a collaboration among Vega, MIT researchers Xin Liu, Viirj Kan and Nick Barry and Harvard Medical School researchers Ali Yetisen and Nan Jiang. 

DermalAbyss is a proof-of-concept that presents a novel approach to bio-interfaces in which the body surface is rendered an interactive display. Traditional tattoo inks are replaced with biosensors whose colors change in response to variations in the interstitial fluid. It blends advances in biotechnology with traditional methods in tattoo artistry. 

This is a research project, and there are currently no plans to develop Dermal Abyss as a product or to pursue clinical trials.