Eliza Squibb

Eliza Squibb is executive director of GAIA Vaccine Foundation, a Rhode Island-based non-profit whose mission is preventing infectious disease in West Africa. Specializing in collaborative environments, Squibb uses textiles design to bridge the worlds of art and science. Through her work with GAIA, she has created cotton prints, produced in West Africa and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that use vivid visual imagery to spread health messaging during national campaigns for women’s reproductive health in Mali and Guinea. As a student at RISD, she was the first artist in residence at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. She also received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the National Science Foundation, conducting research that involved incorporating scientific technology into RISD’s curriculum, setting up closed-system marine aquaria at the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab and testing a curriculum unit in collaboration with the RISD Museum’s teacher workshop program. Her research on traditional art practices has taken her to Tunisia and the Peruvian Amazon, where she taught design workshops in Yine-Yami, Shuar and Shipibo indigenous communities.