In 2009 he co-founded SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Designs), an international transdisciplinary collective of artists, scientists, engineers, and activists [1] Its goal is to reshape the future through critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation.

[6][7][8][9] In 1998 Vermeulen completed his PhD on mouthpart deformities in non-biting midge larvae at the biology department of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

[12] From 2011 to 2012 he was a member of the European Space Agency Topical Team Arts & Science (ETTAS) [13] In 2012 he was a Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design Fellow at Parsons in New York.

[14] He also held positions at LUCA School of Visual Arts in Ghent (Belgium) and Die Angewandte in Vienna (Austria) [15] and has been (guest) faculty at universities across Europe, the US, and Southeast Asia.

Angelo Vermeulen is co-founder of Space Ecologies Art and Design (SEADS), a transdisciplinary and cross-cultural collective of artists, scientists, engineers and activists.

SEADS is actively engaged in deconstructing dominant paradigms about the future and develops alternative models through a combination of critical inquiry and hands-on experimentation.

Over the past years, the collective has created a range of paradigm-shifting projects in which different domains such as visual art, neuroscience, ecology and space technology are blended in unique ways.

The Merapi Terraforming Project used nitrogen-fixing bacteria to help grow legumes in a structure on the flanks of the volcano as both an experiment in food production and a monument to the traumatic past of the location.

A parasitic architectural structure was built inside the Palazzo Viceconte, starting in one of the exhibition spaces and extending all the way into a centuries-old water cistern.

The hostile and unpredictable environment of deep space requires a new conceptual approach for interstellar flight, one that differs radically from any current design in aerospace.

A biological life support system based on the European Space Agency’s MELiSSA program is used to keep multiple generations of crew members alive.

[4]Research into food, crew dynamics, behaviors, roles and performance, and other aspects of space flight and a mission on Mars itself is the primary focus.

HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analogand Simulation) takes place on the flanks of the Mauna Loa Volcano which is the closest approximation of the actual surface of Mars.

Among the other researchers Oleg Abramov, Simon Engler, Kate Greene, Sian Proctor, and Yajaira Sierra Sastre, Vermeulen is the only European member of the crew.

Aside from the food study, Vermeulen investigates the possibilities of remote-operated robotic agriculture in order to create semi-autonomous farms for Mars settlement.

In September - October 2015, Vermeulen exhibited a selection of art photos he made when he was commander on a HI-SEAS mission at the Dome of Visions in Stockholm (Sweden).