Food@Stanford Seminar — FERMENT(N)ATION: From Microbes to Campus Communities with Mugaritz

The Food@Stanford Seminars highlight innovative food-related research seeking to create nutritious, health-promoting, and sustainable food futures. 

RSVP by Wednesday, October 29 at 5:00 PM
Refreshments will be available for registered guests after the presentations.

Doerr Visiting Artist Ramon Perisé and Jordi Bross from the R&D Team of Mugaritz propose looking at fermentation as a living narrative that connects entire ecosystems in different scales—from the microbiome to campus communities—to learn what’s behind inherent processes like symbiosis, but also from values like collaboration, uncertainty, and time. From Mugaritz's approach, fermentation is not only a biological matter: it is a metaphor for transforming ingredients, ideas, and relationships, as well as a creative language for designing experiences with shared meaning. We will explore the essence of fermentation, how microbes inspire models of cooperation, and how those principles translate into bio-art-culinary scenarios (though workshops, installations, dinners, and other). We will integrate an aesthetics of sustainability, understood as a sensory and narrative choreography that, by staging tensions—local/foreign and clear/enigmatic—turns eaters into co-creators and therefore transforms the act of eating into a source of knowledge and culture. We’ll close with a practical framework to co-ferment projects from interdisciplinary approaches, going from the lab to the table—and viceversa.

Mugaritz, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant located in the Basque Country of Spain, is renowned for its innovative approach to culinary art, combining creative gastronomic philosophy that blends cutting-edge culinary techniques with a deep respect for local ingredients and traditions.

The 2025-26 Doerr Visiting Artist is hosted by the Department of Bioengineering, with support from the Doerr School of Sustainability Visiting Artist Program and the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.