His father, whose work is part of the permanent collections of many American art museums, mixed with painters including Picasso, Miró, and Mondrian[28] before becoming an integral member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists.

He had also pioneered visual effects for arena concerts for groups such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Laurie Anderson, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, David Bowie, Paul McCartney.

"[38] One of the first projects was for Broadway play The Crucifer of Blood, a Sherlock Holmes mystery that starred Glenn Close and won Ferren a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award.

Frank Rich said in his The New York Times review of Sunday in the Park with George: "What Mr. Lapine, his designers and the special-effects wizard Bran Ferren have arranged is simply gorgeous.

[48] He was a technical consultant for the films Impostor and Fat Man and Little Boy, and designed the titles for Simon, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,[49] Guilty as Sin,[50] and Little Shop of Horrors.

He did the lighting design and interiors concept for Ian Schrager's "White" variation of Studio 54 in NYC, as well as invented the what is believed to be the first multi-monitor video wall, which premiered at the opening of the Palladium Club, also in New York City, in 1985.

[84] The idea to create the USC Institute for Creative Technologies,[85] and its name (derived from Ferren's title at Disney), originated from discussions with US Army leadership (four-star general Paul J. Kern) on how to gain access to Hollywood entertainment industry expertise in high-technology areas such as computer-based Modeling & Simulation, and Virtual Reality.

[86] Ferren supported Disney's Strategic Planning Group and had direct creative and technical involvement in a wide variety of design and technology projects for Disney Theme Parks, such as the Tower of Terror ride, the Test Track by General Motors,[87] the Indiana Jones Adventure, the Virtual Reality Animation Studio, and many prime time television projects.

[88] He has had a 30+ year creative history collaborating with top senior ABC network director Roger Goodman, with dozens of news, sports, and entertainment division projects.

[92][93] In 1996, Ferren created the Disney Fellows Program which attracted some of the brightest minds in computer science, including Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, and Seymour Papert, as well as astronaut Story Musgrave.

In 1997 Ferren and the Disney fellows were profiled in a major article in The New Yorker, by David Remnick,[96] and in many other publications and news service including Bloomberg,[97] and Newsweek.

As featured in a 2003 article in Discover magazine,[100] they are scored on not just how well they can correctly identify the items, but also their thoughtfulness in explaining how they would be used and why, material selection, sourcing, cost, viable alternatives, and the technical and design principles, and even aesthetics.

[101][102] For example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum selected Applied Minds as winner of an international design competition for the renovation of the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon.

[136][137][138] Recently, an Applied Minds team led by Ferren was hired by leadership of the Smithsonian Institution to help develop their digital strategy.

Ferren has an extensive public speaking career as a subject matter expert, that has spanned a wide range of professional, government, and academic audiences.

His over 250 speaking engagements include Harvard's Center for Public Leadership,[139] MIT,[140][141] MIT Media Lab,[142][143] MIT Sloan School,[144] Wharton,[145] The Smithsonian Institution,[146] SIGGRAPH,[147] the ACM/IEEE Supercomupting Conference SC98,[148] The Art Center College of Design,[149] Florida International University 2018,[150] The U.S. Council on Competitiveness,[151] The Caltech Entrepreneurs Forum,[152] The International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA),[153] The Aspen Ideas Festival 2015,[154] NASA,[18] The U.S. Army,[155] The US Air Force,[156] The U.S. Navy,[157] UCLA,[158][159][160] USC,[161] National Academy of Engineering,[162][163] NYU,[164] Intel Corporation,[165] Infosys,[166] The AUVSI Driverless Car Summit,[167] The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers,[168] The Engineers' Council 2012,[169] Two Optical Fiber Conferences (OFC-2007 & OFC-2017),[170][171] The Engineers Council,[172] The Electric Infrastructure Security Summit VII, Westminster Palace, London,[173] The Global Grand Challenges Summit 2013, in London,[174] The EIS Council[175] World Summit VIII on Infrastructure Security, U.S. Capitol Building,[176] The Smithsonian American Art Museum,[177] The Smithsonian Digital Futures Conference,[178] MIT FAB11 - 2015,[179] The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA New York City) "Working and Living: The High Tech Nomad",[180] The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc. (IFPA) Fletcher Conference 2007,[181] The Envision Confeerence,[182] Two Geodesign Summits,[183] RealComm IBcon 2015,[184][185] TTI Vanguard,[186] Techfire,[187] The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),[188][189] TTI/Vanguard,[190] The Aspen Ideas Festival,[191] The GEOINT Symposium,[192] The 2017 National Competitiveness Forum,[193] 2018 Miyamoto International, Great Minds Series,[194] several E.G.

[253] He can be seen and heard on multiple website and podcasts, expressing his ideas on a wide range of topics from autonomous vehicles,[254][255] innovation,[256] technology,[257] creativity & curiosity,[258] the future of computing,[259] art & design,[260] and tools.

One can see the practical efforts to mitigate the undesirable effects of this phenomenon in the extensive range of options in diffusion filters and soft lighting used routinely in still photography, film and television production.

[288] For several years,[289] he has been strong proponent[290] and thought leader[291] in the emerging field of Geodesign as a powerful tool that he believes has the ability to transform the way we think about city, regional and global planning, the environment, and effectively mitigating the negative impacts of people and development on the natural world.

[304] Bran Ferren is a member of the advisory boards for the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley,[305] CuriosityStream,[306] NanoMech,[136] ReactiveCore.

As a science & technology advisor to Four-star Army General Paul J. Kern in Modeling & Simulation (M&S)[312] he recommended creating a new entity in the vicinity of Los Angeles that would be anchored at a major university.

Under Gen. Kern's leadership, and with the help of Army funding, the ICT was established in 1999 at the University of Southern California (USC), and has become an important and sustaining resource for the Department of Defense in gaming, modeling, & simulation technologies.

His photographs are part of several private collections, and he is completing the editorial work for a large format photo book project called Eleven Seconds.

[341][342] A popular 1980s MTV Television bumper featured a take-off of the final transformation scene in Altered States,[343][344] designed and art directed by Ferren.