about us
premise & philosophy
Forever Lab is a research and innovation lab at Stanford Medicine. We unite artists and scientists in sustained collaboration to design for moments of rupture in the human journey.
what guides us
our Mission
Forever Lab is built on a simple premise: Complex problems in human health demand interdisciplinary collaboration.
We unite artists, scientists, and technologists in sustained collaboration to investigate moments of rupture — such as illness, loss, and caregiving — through rigorous research and creative inquiry. From this shared exploration, we develop and translate new models of care.
what shapes us
our lineage
Forever Lab engages questions of global importance while emerging from a distinct, place-based lineage of cross-disciplinary innovation.
We are rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, where artists, technologists, and scientists have long benefited from our cross-pollination. From early experiments in media art and human–computer interaction to the development of immersive and networked technologies, this region has fostered a culture of exchange across disciplines. We draw inspiration from institutions such as Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, where breakthroughs emerged through sustained dialogue across fields.
We see our work as a contemporary extension of that tradition, reactivating the art–science interface to address enduring questions in human health and care.
The values that ground our methodology
our core principles
These principles articulate the intellectual and ethical commitments that guide how the lab operates.
They shape how questions are framed, how collaborations are structured, and how knowledge moves from investigation to real-world integration. Each principle functions as a methodological anchor within a larger, integrated system.
Care as infrastructure
Care is treated as a structural design principle rather than a peripheral concern. The lab centers emotional, relational, and existential dimensions of human life within research and systems development, ensuring that interventions are built with dignity, complexity, and long-term responsibility in mind.
rigor & creative inquiry
Evidence and imagination are held in productive tension. The lab advances methodologically sound research while embracing artistic experimentation and speculative thinking as legitimate and necessary forms of investigation within health innovation.
translational field-building
The lab develops work with institutional and cultural integration in mind. Investigation and creation are pursued with an eye toward durability and systemic impact.
interdisciplinary parity
Artists, scientists, designers, clinicians, and communities collaborate as co-equal contributors to knowledge production. The lab structures its work so that artistic and scientific intelligence operate in sustained dialogue, shaping inquiry from the outset rather than entering sequentially.
Threshold-center design
Moments of rupture — grief, serious illness, caregiving, aging, and profound transition — are approached as critical sites of inquiry and intervention. The lab directs investigation and creation toward these thresholds, asking how systems can respond with greater depth, coherence, and humanity.
our origin story
How Forever Lab Began
Forever Lab was founded through a collaborative partnership between Janani Balasubramanian and Dr. Karleen Giannitrapani.
Karleen brings decades of experience leading health services research and systems-level innovation in healthcare delivery, alongside a formative background as a dancer and choreographer. Janani is an award-winning artist and director whose boundary-pushing work has been supported and presented by such institutions as the Sloan Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Sundance Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among others.
Through their early collaboration, it became clear that while there was sector-wide interest in uniting artists and scientists around healthcare innovation, there were few existing structures to support such collaboration with continuity and scale. Forever Lab was established to address this gap.
Forever Lab is designed as a sustained platform for interdisciplinary collaboration — one that integrates scientific and artistic intelligence from the outset of inquiry through to translation.