Maria Barbosa was born in Brazil and lives in Frederick, Maryland. She received a B.S. from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, a M.S. from the Escola Paulista de Medicina, a Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. She was working as a Cell Biologist at the National Institutes of Health, when she decided to commit her efforts to her art and education. Her installations and artist’s books are exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in the collections of The National Institutes of Health, the Getty Research Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, Cornell University, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Barbosa is a Kennedy Center teaching artist, participates in Artist-in-Education programs in Maryland, and gives workshops on arts integration around the country. Barbosa teaches at MATI, the Maryland Artist/Teacher Institute, and at the Teaching Artists Institute (TAI) in Maryland and is the founding director of GAIN, the Global Arts Integration Network, a non-profit being formed to foster international collaboration among teachers and teaching artists and the use of arts integrated approaches.