The Team
People Behind Chilopod
Lawrence Grown
Lead Artist
Lawrence AKA Steady is passionate about sustainability, design, and community. He is the founder of many businesses and organizations including Metro Lighting.
After attending Black Rock City in 2016 with AquaZone Love Water Bar, Lawrence was inspired to create for the Burning Man community and had initial plans for Chilopod drawn by the 2017 Burn. Chilopod was first born on playa in 2018.
Lawrence’s mission is to inspire new ways of interacting with the world, in order to heal it.
Camille Tsao
Communications Manager
Camille can frequently be found at the Chilopod events taking photos. She is a first-time Burner, looking forward to finally experiencing the Playa, the art, and the BM community this year! In her spare time, she loves dancing, traveling, gardening, and spending time with friends and family.
Stuart Stands
Tech Lead
Musician, systems architect, bon vivant, and gadabout. Trained as a physicist. Crossed the Himalayas 4 times solo and trekked to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Enjoyed cocktails with the princess of Bhutan in an intimate setting. Created "I am of Two Minds" (a set of two glowing, pulsing, conversing brains) and "The Bat of the American Dream" art installations at Burning Man in 2005 and 2008. Collaborated on Dance Dance Immolation and Syzygryd.
He works in the technology field as a Systems Architect, responsible for the design of complex computer-human systems. The software he created in the '90's still processes your money today.
Matthieu Mayran
Camp-lead Assistant
Matthieu enjoys sports like (kite)surfing, water polo, and basketball. He works as a software engineer which gave him the opportunity to live in several countries for years at a time. He is looking forward to some time off the computer to do manual work. His first BM was in 2009 then back in 2010 with a crew of friends who built a few city buildings that were … burnt in the end. He also went to Kiwiburn and Midburn where he led a camp for 5 years printing a daily newspaper and building a library. He finds geodesic domes fascinating and made 3 from scratch.
Andrew Purcell
Deputy Build Lead
Andrew likes learning hobbies just enough to make one cool thing [1] and then abandoning the supplies in his closet. He first burned in 2014 and was inspired by all the creative energy around him. He came back and promptly took a welding class which was entirely impractical for an apartment dweller. During business hours he's a software engineer, but in the evening he becomes a cook, a muscle idiot, a non-Tiki rum connoisseur and a friend.
[1] sometimes two to three cool things
Parya Aghasafari
Data Sciencist, Fundraising Lead
Parya is by nature an analytical thinker and problem solver. She is interested in using AI to create digital twins of organizations to automate daily tasks and generate insights. She has been actively supporting organizations addressing sustainability and promoting inclusion and diversity.
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Parya’s mission is to leverage science, and technology to monitor and track environmental impact, and optimize industrial inefficiencies.
Tony Choi
Project Manager
Tony is a Project Manager for Chilopod. He is the one with the power tools at the warehouse build events. He’s remodeled several homes so nothing scares him when it comes to construction. 2022 will be his first year at Burning Man and he can’t wait to test out his new solar generator on the Playa.
Heidi Cuppari
Investing Advisor - Educator
Heidi Cuppari is a meta-leader in the sustainable financing, impact investing, youth entrepreneurship, and women’s leadership realms. She is the Founder & Executive Director of Dream Tank and the Island17 Metaverse DAO, Partner at Cuppari Mondo Bello Piazza d’Arte, a public speaker, mentor, and impact investing advisor at Heidi Cuppari LLC, and a Council Member at The Digital Economist.
Her prime career directive is socially responsible corporate growth, from companies and nonprofits to political campaigns. She activates — and supports maximizing the global impact of — Gen Z, Millennials, and women through strategic collaboration and collective paradigm alignment.
Alireza Dirafzoon
Sound, Language, Soundscape, DJ
Alireza is a work-in-progress human with a wandering soul exploring his purpose on this planet. He is an engineer and AI enthusiast and loves to exploit high-end technology to solve meaningful problems for humans. In his day job, he contributes to building AI engines for future AR glasses in Meta.
As part of his mission on earth, he loves to contribute to increasing human consciousness on earth open-heartedly and is on a search to find new ways to make people feel good.
Sina Soleimanpour
Sensors Specialist
Sina is enthusiastic about solving problems on his computer. These problems range from finding the best angle to shoot a 2d simulated soccer ball, re-installing his operating systems, to writing large-scale distributed systems to handle Exabytes of data or simulate years of driving data.
Outside of the computer world, he enjoys listening to music, dancing, hiking, and camping.
Asy Dhaif
Web Design Lead
Asy is a multi-disciplinary designer. She has worked in various roles, including Web Design, Instructional Design Systems, and Product Design.
In her free time, she likes to read, work on random art experiments, or produce real-time visuals for music events.
Darrell Hunger
Lead CAD Designer
(AKA) Hunger. Seven times to Burning man. Member of Earth Guardians Camp His involvement with Chilopod was being the lead CAD designer in 2018. He worked closely with Lawrence to engineer and bring Chilopod to life. This year's involvement is to consult on continuing refinements and additions to the project’s structure.
