• MAINE ARTS COMMISSION ARTIST PROJECT GRANT 2025 Creation and installation of new work

• FREEPORT MOMENTUM GRANT 2024 -Freeport Town Hall Woodland Interpretive signs, Lead for 3 member team project

• INTERNATIONAL DEZEEN DESIGN AWARDS, 2020 - Longlisted in Sustainable Design category, for Rubber Impact Project Material Exchange Station

• IMPACT AWARD & FELLOWSHIP - THE CENTER FOR IMPACT, California College of the Arts, (budget $25,000), 2019

• ROBERT MONDAVI FELLOWSHIP FOR STUDY IN THE ARTS, Stanford University, 2002-03

• MOST INNOVATIVE ENTREPRENEUR SAN FRANCISCO - (first finalist) awarded by Mayor Willie Brown FOR San Francisco Small Business Commission, 2003

• ALAMEDA COUNTY WASTE REDUCTION & RECYCLING GRANT, (budget $39,000), 1995

• “MIRABELLA 1000”, 1 OF 1000 most influential women in America by Mirabella Magazine and Ford Motor Company, 1994

• MATERIALS MATCH AWARD, California Integrated Waste Management - Materials Exchange, 1993

Mandana’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History from 1992-1994, the National Science Museum in London from 1996-2006 and installed in a permanent exhibit there in 2006. National Geographic, Vogue, Discovery, NPR, Tire Business and hundreds of other diverse media outlets have featured her company, Used Rubber USA for its pioneering and fashionable use of waste rubber and other eco aware textiles. In 1994 Mirabella Magazine and Ford Motor Company named her 1 of 1000 most influential women in America.

A graduate of Brown University, Mandana also received an MFA from Stanford University’s Joint Program in Design where she was the recipient of the Robert Mondavi Fellowship for Study in the Arts. While completing her thesis at Stanford in 2003, she co created the first sustainable design class for the design division of Stanford’s Mechanical Engineering department and continued on as a lecturer there until moving to Maine.

Mandana has been on the faculty at Stanford, California College of the Arts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Academy of Art University and has worked with organizations such as the Natural Step, an international sustainability think tank, creating and consulting on ecological design curriculum, tools, and programming. She currently lives in Maine and travels to California annually to teach.

• STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 2001-03, MFA - Joint Program in Design - Art & Mechanical Engineering Departments

• BROWN UNIVERSITY, 1983-86, BA with Honors - Studio Art sculpture concentration, BA - English Literature - poetry concentration

• RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN, 1983-86, Study in illustration, drawing, and sculpture for Brown University academic credit

• SEMESTER AT SEA - Institute for Shipboard Education, 1985 Spring, study to ports in 12 countries

• TUFTS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING, 1982-83, Dean’s List

• THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL, 1980-82, Headmaster’s List