Our Founders

CEO | Keith McCurdy

Named by Vogue “the most famous tattoo artist in the world,” Keith is responsible for iconic tattoos on Rihanna, LeBron James, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, Adele, Selena Gomez, and countless others. Now, Keith has recently announced the world’s first reprogrammable, rewritable, erasable tattoo nanotechnology, Magic Ink, and is positioned to reinvent the modern tattoo… again. Keith is the founder of BANG BANG in New York City which operates on two planes — as an inclusive, multi-functional tattoo lifestyle brand for humans of all races, as well as a progressive retail establishment with an unparalleled focus on customer service, design, experience, and artist & client well-being.

CSO | Nanotechnologist | Dr. Carson Bruns

Under the guidance of Nobel Laureate J. Fraser Stoddart and Sam Stupp, Dr. Burns received his PHD in Organic Chemistry in 2013 from Northwestern University. In 2017, after spending three years as a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned home to Colorado as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Burns is the co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles and a textbook, which are collectively cited thousands of times. His interdisciplinary work, which embraces art, science, and engineering, makes creative use of molecular nanotechnology to develop new materials with potential applications in diverse areas, including biomedicine, energy transduction, human-computer interfaces, automation, and body art.

CTO | Dr. Jesse Butterfield

As Dr. Carson’s first Mechanical Engineering PhD student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Dr. Butterfield has spent years developing new tattoo technologies in the lab. His PhD thesis, “Antiphotocarcinogenic Intradermal Tattoos,” supported the foundation of our company by describing the invention and characterization of the first HYPRSKN technologies. Today, Dr. Butterfield continues to refine those technologies and develop new innovations for HYPRSKN as its CTO. Every batch of Magic Ink ever made has been tested by Dr. Butterfield, both in the lab and in his own skin.