About

Biography & Artistic Practice

Sergio A. Montoya (b. 1987, Los Angeles, California) is a professional research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a visual artist whose practice unfolds through parallel engagements with empirical research and abstraction. Trained in physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering, his scientific work centers on advanced materials and device systems developed through experimental and analytical methods within an academic research environment.

Alongside his academic research, Montoya maintains an independent studio practice in painting and photography. His artistic work approaches abstraction as a sustained investigation of perception, process, and material constraint. Through repetition, subtle variation, and attentiveness to surface and rhythm, his paintings examine how visual structures emerge over time, foregrounding experience and observation rather than representation. While informed by a scientific background, the work resists illustration, operating through its own formal and perceptual logic.

He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2021, Montoya has been a scholar at UCSD’s Center for Memory and Recording Research.

Montoya’s dual engagement as an active research scientist within an academic institution and as a visual artist situates his practice within a rare professional context, in which scientific investigation and artistic production remain distinct yet conceptually resonant modes of inquiry, each shaped by iterative process, material constraint, and sustained observation.

For scientific research and publications, visit Montoya’s Advanced Materials and Devices Laboratory website.