Marlena Novak is an Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation; in 2018 she received the Marion Kryczka Excellence in Teaching Award. Prior to that, she served as Associate Director of Northwestern’s Animate Arts Program, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago and visiting professor at the University of New Mexico. She has been a visiting artist at the University of Chicago, Cleveland Institute of Art, Amsterdams Instituut voor Schilderkunst, Pädagogische Hochschule (St. Gallen, Switzerland), and a resident at the Creativity and Cognition Research Studios (Loughborough, UK). She has received grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Illinois Arts Council, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She was educated at Carnegie-Mellon and Northwestern Universities. Her work is included in public (the Corcoran in Washington, DC and the Mondriaanhuis in Amersfoort in The Netherlands) and private collections in Europe and the USA, and has been presented extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. In 2018 she was an artist in residence in Krems, Austria.