Dr. Mika is a trained climate scientist, having worked in the field for nearly two decades. She completed her Ph.D in Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, and her postdoctoral work at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She is an educator, scientist, artist, activist, and humanist, and imagines ways that artists and designers can collaborate with climate scientists in an effort to better communicate and conduct climate science research. She is fiercely committed to expanding access to climate science knowledge to non-scientists.

She has written extensively about the emerging synthesis of art and science and has been invited to speak on the ways art-science collaborations can help us build post-climate change worlds, including a role as Plenary speaker at the 2022 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. In 2021, Mika was named to the Grist 50 Fixers list and in 2023 she was interviewed by both the BBC’s Science in Action and HEATED’s Arielle Samuelson about her work and activism.

Mika works with young artists to push the boundaries of collaboration. Her first collaborative art piece on which she is credited as an artist-scientist (alongside MFA student and artist Yousif Alzayed) is titled “Solar Re-Location” and was exhibited at the Bridgeport Art Center during the Summer of 2023. She continues to be vocal about the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.