Prof. Keolu Fox

Assistant Professor, The Indigenous Futures Lab

United States

Like many Americans, I am the child of multiple waves of remarkable immigration. My mother’s family hails from Kohala, an ahupua’a on the Big Island of Hawai’i where our Kūpuna (ancestors) arrived via canoe from the Marquesas Islands ~1,000 years ago. As generations passed, our Kūpuna mixed with immigrants from Madeira to form what is now called Paniolo (Hawaiian Cowboy) culture.

My father’s family hails from Safed, Israel, an eccentric Jewish-refugee artist colony established in the aftermath of WWII. Before founding the artist colony in Safed, my grandparents fell in love collaborating on what they told me were “arts-and-crafts” projects in a concentration camp in Mechelen, Belgium.

I let the complexity of my genome and my families’ experiences with both colonialism and genocide guide my everyday practice as an Indigenous futurist, genome scientist, and advocate for community-driven research.

I am currently an assistant professor at UCSD where I am affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, the Global Health Program, the Climate Action Lab, and the Indigenous Futures Lab. My research interests include genome sequencing technology, genome engineering, point-of-care technology development and Indigenizing biomedical research.

Our team of experts is using digital safeguarding technology to solve problems in Indigenous genomics.

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