University Place

Too Creative for Science?

[Tom Zinnen, Outreach Specialist, Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Welcome everyone, to Wednesday Nite at The Lab. I’m Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW-Extension, Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Night at the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.

Tonight, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Ahna Skop. She’s a professor here in the Genetics department. She’s also on the board of the Wisconsin Science Museum. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated from high school in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. She went to Syracuse University for her undergrad and came here for her Ph.D., did a post-doc at the University of California Berkeley, and then came back here to be on the faculty.

Tonight, she’s going to talk about “Too Creative for Science?” Please join me in welcoming Ahna Skop to Wednesday Night at the Lab.

[applause]

[Ahna Skop, Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

So, I just want to apologize ahead of time. I have – I am getting over a very bad sinus infection, so I – I talk low, I have a very deep voice, but not this deep.

[laughter]

But I’m going to tell you a story about my life. And – and then how that has influenced my career. It’s probably a little unconventional, but it’s a great story, especially to tell students and also the public about one’s path in life.

So, the title’s called “Too Creative for Science?” And I’m going to get into what that means in a few slides down the road. But first, I’m – the outline that I’m going to talk about today is I’ll tell you about my family, I’ll tell you about what this too create – being too creative actually means, a little bit about my science, a little bit about my teaching –

[slide featuring a electron microscope image of a cell and the outline of the talk with the words, my family, being too creative, my science, my teaching and science as art stacked vertically on the right of the slide]

– and then science as art. So, I have – I have a whole bunch of stuff to tell you tonight. But a lot of it is going to be visual and it’s going to be exciting, so hopefully you’ll keep your attention.

[new slide with the words, my genetics in white on a black background]

So, being a geneticist, most important thing is, where – you know, what is my genetics. So, I need to tell you that –

[Ahna Skop]

– before you know who I am. So, this is a pedigree, this is my family.

[slide titled my genetics, featuring Ahna’s family tree with photos of her father (Ukrainian sculptor, medical illustration anatomy educator, etc.) and mother (Cherokee & Lebanese ceramist/art educator) at the top and photos of her (geneticist), two sisters (both graphic designers) and brother (industrial designer) at the bottom of the tree]

So, my father, so I come from a family of artists. My entire family are artists.

My father was a sculptor and a medical illustrator and also taught anatomy to medical students. Right off the bat that’s unusual, right? My mother was a ceramist and an art educator. They had four children. I am the oldest, I became the scientist. My next two sisters are graphic designer. My brother is an industrial designer. So, how the heck did I end up a scientist?

You could see that my father had a keen interest in science, so he is more classically trained, European trained in the arts, and the art and science for him was no separation. And so that was my life. However, as many of you know, in the education system in America, people have separated science and art. And so, my story is of how did I overcome that from a household like this?

[slide featuring the front and back view of the sculpture The Bowman and the Spearman by Ivan Mestrovic in Chicago’s Grant Park along with a small image of Rodin’s The Thinker in the lower right and the words Rodin’s student and a photo of Ivan Mestrovic in the lower right]

So, my father mentor was Ivan Mestrovic, which is over here. He was a pupil of Rodin. Most people know Rodin and “The Thinker.” Mestrovic, you may have seen the work. So, if you’ve been down at Chicago’s Grant Park, The Ivan and – The Bowman and the Spearman are by Mestrovic and my father helped cast those. So, in some ways you’ve seen my dad’s work. So, that’s my dad’s work.

[slide featuring Ahna’s father, Michael Skop, in his sculpting studio doing a bust of a football coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, as said coach sits in a chair to his left]

Here’s a picture from my ho-home, where I grew up. There’s my father doing a bust of his football coach. My father was the winning football player at Syracuse, played with Jim Brown and went to the Orange Bowl, as did my brother. Very unusual as – as well. This was his coach. Ernie Davis was also on the team, I think right before my father, and so this is one of the most winningest coach at Syracuse. But I grew up with very dirty, messy floors –

[Ahna Skop]

– and I became, have a very sterile environment in a laboratory, but this is – this is what I knew growing up.

My father had an art school at my house, and people came from all over the world to study with my father. From Japan and England, but as you can see –

[slide featuring a photo of Ahna’s father’s art school class, Studio 70, in 1974 with an arrow pointing to a very young Ahna in the back row]

– in the – in the 70’s, and here I am at the top, it’s a bunch of hippies, right?

[laughter]

Lots of people, but not only just a – a free-spirited bunch, people who were – have become actresses and art dealers. Some of them, you know, musicians and architects. So, very eclectic group. I grew up thinking these people were my brothers and sisters. They still are –

[Ahna Skop]

– until today. And it was just an unbelievably rich environment in which to grow up. And so, this was my life.

I grew up in a very unusual home. You may think I’m wealthy.

[slide featuring a photo of the Julian Bechtold House in Fort Thomas, Kentucky on the left and the words, the power of networking on the upper right]

I grew up in a family of artists. We didn’t have very much money. When I was born – I was born in New Haven and then I moved. This is in Kentucky, in northern Kentucky in a town called Fort Thomas. It’s an old Civil War fort. And so, my father grew up in a very poor single parent home. And played football, got a full ride to school, and when he went –

[Ahna Skop]

– to art school, his – he always was looking – his mentors always gave him opportunities, and this is a story of – this house is another story of opportunities and the power of networking. I always like to tell people this story. So, my – his mentor says, “There’s an ad in a newspaper.” Right? There wasn’t internet. Back in the days people read the classifieds. There was an ad in the newspaper that there was an artist, Julian Bechtold, who was looking for another artist because he was getting old and sick, to take care of this home he had built in Kentucky. My dad applied for this competition. Given that he was – he had four kids. And so, we moved from Connecticut to Kentucky. We won this home, and so, which had a studio and everything. The cool thing, a little history about Julian Bechtold, is the Cincinnati area, if many of you know, is Proctor and Gamble is housed there. So, the cool thing about this house is this is where the very first Ivory soap bar was carved, and that was done –

[slide featuring a photo of the Julian Bechtold House in Fort Thomas, Kentucky on the left and a photo of several generations of Ivory soap bars on the right with the words the power of networking written above]

– by Julian Bechtold. And so that was my life, we had a series of – of – of things through networking and mentorship that had allowed us to live a seemingly rich and wealthy life.

[Ahna Skop]

These are pictures of Julian Bechtold around the house. There’s a sculpture and then reliefs –

[slide featuring a photo of the inside of Julian Bechtold’s home with a large sculpture of a man and some reliefs against a back wall]

– walking into the home.

[new slide featuring a photo of the renovated old studio in Julian Bechtold’s home with Ahna’s brother working at his desk on the far left of the photo]

My brother has purchased the home and renovated it, so this is the old studio where actually they had plaster and clay, but my brother’s an industrial designer there working at home. Unbelievably beautiful place.

[new slide featuring a photo of the backyard of the Julian Bechtold home with a raised garden and various sculptures in the gardens with the quote from Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”]

And then the backyard, my dad had all of these, wanted to learn how – gardening, pour concrete, make a rose garden, and all these kinds of things, in addition to scattering sculptures throughout the home. And – and when I – by the time when I reached high school, my father – my father had said – he – he loved quotes and you’ll see quotes throughout my talk, is that he – he wrote quotes and he had them in cement here, and one of them he – he said to me, always remember this when you leave here. So, when I went to college, this is what he said, “Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.” And so, I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew it because that was my life.

[Ahna Skop]

I was an artist, genetically an artist. I was interested in science, and so, how – how do I, I need to remember this, right? So, here is my path. I love this, this is a photograph of Norway.

[slide featuring a winding road in a Norwegian fjord with a picture of the Syracuse mascot and the words Syracuse University, undergrad in an orange box at one bend, a picture of Bucky Badger and the words UW-Madison, Graduate in a red box at another bend and finally, a picture of a golden bear and the words UC-Berkeley, Postdoc in a blue box at a different bend in the road]

My path is very windy because I – I went through a lot of successes but many failures. I went to Syracuse where my – my father played football. Partly because I – I just had to go there, that was part of our lifestyle, you know, football and Syracuse was a big deal. And then I – how I came to Wisconsin is an interesting thing.

[Ahna Skop]

Majority of my faculty that I loved, all went to Madison, and they said, “You gotta go here, it’s the most amazing place on earth.” I said, “There’s only beers and – beer and cheese there, I can’t imagine you can get a Ph.D.” Right? But I came and applied. It was the last place I applied, but I fell in love, and I’ve lived here the longest. And so, I got my Ph.D. here in 2000. And then I left and went to Berkeley and then came back as a faculty. So, I – I fell in love not only with the university, but also with the state and the people that reside here, obviously.

So, now back to my graduate school, so this is the title. This is what happened. So, I – I came here and in the first couple of years in graduate school I joined the laboratory. And then, this was said to me. So, “Too creative for science.” So, I’ve just told you my life story about how creativity and art was a huge part of my life. So, you can imagine that if a mentor would’ve said that to you, you’d probably be devastated. And so, I was terribly devastated. I left the laboratory and I said, “I don’t think this is a place for me.” I didn’t really – I couldn’t imagine someone saying that because I thought sciences were super creative, too. I knew that from my childhood. My father said it to me, but when I, you know, when I got to college and I got to grad school, that was a devastating statement that stayed with me for the rest of my life.

I left here, went to – went to Memorial Library, and I decided to go back in some old scientific texts. I always love to go back to when scientists were artists. So, of course, I came across Leonardo da Vinci –

[slide featuring the question Too creative for science? Along with a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci with his anatomy of man and a quote from da Vinci – Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and the words, when scientists were artists, at the bottom of the slide]

– as many of you know. I was trying to soul search and figure out, is this scientist possibly correct? And could I possibly be too creative? And I realized that was not true, right? So, this was when scientists were actually, you know, appreciated on both sides of – of – of the isle. They’re both scientists and artists. And – and that was – that was consoling to me because I felt like, “I -Should I leave science because I don’t feel like I’m welcome here?” But I kept going –

[Ahna Skop]

– and I kept discovering scientists throughout my life.

One of – another scientist that I found that I was really enamored by was Ramon y Cajal. So, he’s the father of neuroscience –

[slide featuring an illustration of Purkinje neurons and the name Roman y Cajal, father of neuroscience and also noting that he was an avid painter and artist as a child, but his father didn’t encourage him, but these talents were key to his scientific success]

– and like myself, he – he loved the arts. And his father, you know, didn’t encourage him, but these were – these drawings of Purkinje neurons in the brain were – were key to his scientific discoveries. And if any of you know, there’s a show now in – in – at Minnesota Art Museum with Cajal. I encourage you to go do that. So again, another scientist who also was – used art for discovery.

Another person –

[new slide featuring the words, Importance of visualization in discovery, with a photo of Rosalind Franklin in the upper left corner and a photo of X-ray diffraction in the middle of the slide]

– I stumbled upon probably many of you know, was Rosalind Franklin. This is another story of the importance of visualization in discovery. So, this X-ray diffraction image here, which is the – which is the first picture of the D.N.A. structure, was enormously impactful for these two men that – that all got the credit, right? –

[slide featuring a photo of Watson and Crick next to a model of the D.N.A. structure]

– Watson and Crick, took that image and built a sculpture, right? Many call them in science models, it’s actually a sculpture. It’s a three-dimensional image of what Rosalind Franklin saw. And so, I looked at all of those pieces and I said to myself, “That – all those things I see, this is like an armature that you would see in – in a sculpture studio.” These scientists were using the visualization to actually make discoveries. And so, I felt like, “Well, if these people are using it, then I belong in science. You know, this is really important to me and I – I should be here.” I – I am – creativity is super important.

Along the way, I’ve met –

[Ahna Skop]

– a lot of interesting scientists, some with similar backgrounds. One of them is Eric Demaine, I don’t know if any of you know him, he’s at M.I.T. and I actually think –

[slide featuring the title, Geometry of origami, robotics and drug discovery, with the words, Eric Demaine @ M.I.T and the fact that at the age of 22 he wins the MacArthur genius award for using origami (art) to solve mathematical problems along with some photos and animations of the origami he used in his research]

– he’s still younger than me. So, at the age of 22, was an M.I.T. faculty. He won the MacArthur genius award, and he used origami to solve mathematical problems that no one ever solved before. He – in addition, both his parents were artists. He’s also an artist. He makes origami art. In addition, he also applies this origami idea to robotics. And this is a – a movie of his self-folding paper. That’s also a great movie if you can find it online – of he used the design of a crab and also the i-idea of origami to create robots that can flatten themselves and go in places where maybe a building has been destructed and go under small crevices and help people out. So, you would have never thought that origami would have been something –

[Ahna Skop]

– that could have helped and saved people and also solve math, right? So, it’s enormously amazing to actually meet people like this who have similar backgrounds, who’ve come up with stuff that you would have never imagined that is amazingly impactful to normal human life.

Let’s see. So, what have I learned from this?

[slide featuring the title, What have I learned?, and the fact that scientists develop ideas that are both new and useful and this is the very definition of creativity]

So, you know, I learned from this, is that – is – is that, you know, sometimes people say things to you, and they upset you. They change your mind about it. But I realized that it – it also – I realized that sometimes you have to make up your own decisions for yourself and you’ve got to do the research and find the facts and realize that you’re right. And what I also learned is that scientists and artists have a lot of things in common. And they – they develop ideas that are new and useful, which is actually the definition of creativity. So, I belong here. It’s definitely, you know, where I need to be.

[Ahna Skop]

And I found a quote recently that I really love. So, there’s a psychologist at U.C.-Berkeley. She says, you know,

[slide featuring the quotes by Alison Gopnik, psychologist at U.C.-Berkeley on the connection between toddlers and scientists that Ahna reads below]

“Scientists are actually the few people who as adults get to have protective time when they can just explore, play, figure out what the world is like.” “Scientists are simply big children.” Right? So, I realize I’m probably the biggest child –

[Ahna Skop]

– around and I know many scientists are that way. And so, I realize, you know, in addition to this really creative side of scientists’ life, they’re also simply very playful and inquisitive people. Right? And so, you know, I decided to pursue science, right? So, I’ll share a – a little bit about what I do in my lab.

So, when I first joined the lab at Syracuse, I joined a lab working on R.N.A. splicing. I don’t know if anyone, you love R.N.A. splicing. I don’t really like it still today. But this is how you assay it, with a D.N.A. gel.

[slide featuring a photo of a D.N.A. gel]

Don’t know how many people have seen a D.N.A. gel here. I think this is terribly boring and I don’t find it biology. Some people actually like to put it in their home –

[new slide with a large orange colored D.N.A. gel behind a couch]

– as art, right?

[laughter]

I don’t really care for it. It’s maybe better as art than for me as science. I don’t really get anything out of it. But what I –

[new slide with a photo of mitotic cell embryo of a nematode]

– what I fell in love with in my textbook was an image like this. This is a mitotic cell embryo of a nematode that I still work on today that I started in my undergraduate. And those are the D.N.A. and the chromosomes labeled in the middle. I was – thought this was like the Picasso. I’d never seen anything like this. You know, I was like, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” And so, I wanted to figure this out –

[Ahna Skop]

– because it was so beautiful. Not because it needed to work out. I didn’t know what it was important for. I had no clue what it was important for. But I knew it was beautiful and I knew that some kind of molecules and machines had to be involved in building that, and that’s something my lab works on today. So, for me, this idea of beauty inspiring curiosity is really important to me and so everything I do comes from that visual. I am a visual learner. I’m also dyslexic, like Einstein was, like Leonardo da Vinci was, so this visual learning thing is really important to how I understand and learn.

So, my lab studies the cell division process from –

[slide titled, cell division is important, featuring three photos of cell division]

– one cell to two cells. And so, the big question in the field is that we don’t know all the molecules that are – that are to get this one cell to two, but we know if we do, we can inhibit cell division. And that’s important for several reasons.

[slide animates on visual representations of tumor cells, birth defects cells, stem cell differentiation cells and Alzheimer’s glia cells]

Many of them, as you probably know, when cell division goes out of control, you get a tumor, right? You get a cancerous cell, so it divides out of control. The other thing you probably know is also you get birth defects, trisomy 21, chromosomes are going in the wrong way. Right? The other part of it is there is often asymmetric division in which it helps to arise to stem cells. So, you get one cell becoming different from the other. And that cell division is involved in that process.

What you may not know, and something I’m working on in my lab, is – is that cells actually in neurodegenerative patients, in the brain, are actually failing to divide. And this is really, really new, and some hypotheses we’re trying to test.

[new slide featuring a photo of Walther Flemming superimposed over black and white images microscopic images of cells dividing with red arrows pointing towards parts of the cell division]

Now, before I actually go study my problem, I like to go back to the first science artist that actually looked at my process. So, Walther Flemming is sort of my icon. He’s actually the father of mitosis, also an artist, which is great. And the red – the red arrows here are marking something that he thought was really important. And so, this was in 1891. So, this is – this structure is often called the Flemming body. Today it’s called the mid-body. And so, he thought this was super important. At the time when I was in graduate school, in the mid ’90’s, people thought this was the garbage can of the cell. But however, this guy in 1891 thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Something is really important because all cells have it. So, what did I do?

[slide titled, we identified over 100 factors important for cell division with a microscopic photo of two cells dividing and an arrow pointing to midbody proteomics. Additionally, there is an image of a garbage can with a red circle and a line through it]

Well, applied new technology. So, my lab, sort of – my lab is sort of famous for doing – isolating the structure and doing something called midbody proteomics. So, we isolated the structure, and we seek and solve the proteins in there. So just like D.N.A. sequencing, you’re getting all the D.N.A. base pairs out, these are all the proteins –

[Ahna Skop]

– within the structure. So, it’s not a garbage can, there’s stuff there that’s important, and I knocked out all these genes and they all have cell division defects. That was the surprise to many. So, not a garbage can.

One of the proteins I’m working on currently is something called Ataxin-2.

[return to the slide featuring the cells dividing but now titled, Ataxin-2 was identified in the mammalian midbody ,with the word Ataxin-2 replacing the words midbody proteomics in the previous slide]

So, these are mammalian cells, this is mammalian gene, Ataxin-2. So, one of the reasons why I want to study it, is it belongs to, in humans, when it’s mutated, it causes a human neurodegenerative disease.

[slide titled, Ataxin-2 is mutated in Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 (S.C.A.2), with two brain scan photos, one of an unaffected cerebellum and one of a S.C.A.2 affected cerebellum along with an illustration of the test for Ataxia – holding a finger or toy in front of a child and asking him to touch it on the first try. A child with ataxia cannot do it – superimposed over the second photo]

And it’s called Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2. So, in – in normal patients, this is what your cerebellum looks like. And then as you – if you have neurodegenerative disease, and often like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as well, you often will have an atrophy of the cerebellum. It actually shrinks and gets smaller. And these patients, sort of the test of it, is that – is – is like – it’s a tremor disease, so that’s what an ataxia actually means. So, if you’re going to go point at something, a child or an adult, you can’t point at it because you have an ataxia. So, that’s the test for ataxia. So, that was interesting to me.

[Ahna Skop]

How did something identified in cell division actually, possibly have something to do with neurodegeneration? And I – I was totally surprised by that.

If we look closer into the cerebellum –

[slide titled, Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 (S.C.A.2), featuring an illustration of a brain with the cerebellum highlighted and to its right two illustrations of Purkinje cells, one a normal cell with long tree-like tendrils and one of a cell of a S.C.A.2 patient with much shorter tendrils]

– these are just schematics of what this looks like. Here’s the cerebellum. The cells that come from it are these things that I just showed you that Cajal used to – to draw, the Purkinje Cells. So, they – they – they form these unbelievably dense and unbelievably beautiful dendritic arbors. So, they call them dendritic kind of trees. And they’re very extensive. However, in the patients here, they’re actually short and small, they’re like shrubs, right? So, there’s different ideas in the field about why this is. Some people think that it’s actually because the neurons themselves are miss-regulating. I, however, think that it’s the cells around them. And I’ll show you why I think that. So, –

[slide featuring an electron microscopic image of 9 glial cells in one neuron in the human brain with a smaller image of a neuron and neuroglial cells superimposed over it]

– let’s go to a beautiful image here. So, this is a picture in the cerebellum. These are these neurons. However, these little nuclei, right here, are all over the place here. These are the cells that are always actively dividing in your brain, all the way up until death. And here’s another image here is that there are generally nine of these glial cells to one neuron in the brain. So, they’re probably the most abundant cell in the brain. And what’s interesting is that they have to go through asymmetric divisions and multiple divisions throughout your lifetime to maintain that beautiful neuron structure. So, that’s actually a pretty cool point. And so –

[New slide with the phrase, How do I study the function of Ataxin-2?]

– so, how am I studying this Ataxin-2 in this model organism I’m going to share with you?

So, I study it in C. elegans –

[Ahna Skop]

– because we have embryos that are actually quite large. And they have rapid cell division. So, I’ll show you what this looks like. This is my favorite organism. This is a hermaphrodite organism –

[slide featuring a movie of the C. elegans organism crawling along in a loop]

– crawling across the stage and inside of it, so this is a millimeter long, this is smaller than a pinhead. So, what I do is I cut that in half and we take the embryos. You can see these little embryos here. Those are what I love in there. So, they – they have sperm and egg and they lay tons of embryos. They live for about two weeks. If you cut them open, this is what it looks like.

[new slide featuring a video of a sliced open C. elegans embryo with sperm and egg meeting]

This beautiful embryo. These are – this is sperm and egg meeting. This is where all the magic happens. And mitosis occurs and then you’re going to get a cleavage.

I did this movie when I was a grad student here. If you look, it’s only twenty minutes and you have a division. Human cells, it takes about 24 hours just to make that division itself. That’s a really long time for a scientific thing. So, the other thing about it is light actually is passing through this embryo so you can see that. So, it’s very easy to see the division process. I love looking at this. I see things different every day. And eventually, you know, it – this – this – these divisions are going to divide, and it’s inside an egg, if you can see here, this little membrane, eventually it’s going to divide and become that whole worm, and it’s going to hatch and come – come out of the – the egg. And that – and that takes, depending on the temperature –

[Ahna Skop]

– takes, you know, less than a day and a half. So, that’s pretty remarkable. So, that’s why we do it.

The other cool thing that is great about C. elegans is this is where G.F.P. was actually first used. So, the Nobel Prize –

[slide titled, G.F.P., Green Fluorescent Protein, with nine images of items that have their proteins lighted green, including C. elegans, a bee, a rabbit, a fish, rats, a tree, and various cells]

– for using the green fluorescent protein, which lights up any protein you want in the cell. So, every organism, this is just an example, Marty Chalfie is a C. elegans biologist who actually first fused the green fluorescent protein to genes to light up proteins. But now- nowadays everyone uses this – this jellyfish gene to light up proteins of interest in any organism. So, I do that myself and I take live videos of that.

[slide featuring the C. elegans video again this time with G.F.P tagged to D.N.A. and the mitotic spindle]

So, that’s that same embryo you saw but now we’re tagging it to the D.N.A. and the – the spindle that holds up the D.N.A. We can watch this mitosis happening live in the images. So, that’s what I do a lot of in my lab, is using the visual, and you could see if I come from a family of artists, this might seem very attractive to someone like me. And so, I love this because I learn from looking –

[Ahna Skop]

– and seeing. And I can look at it all the time and people, there’s hundreds of people around, scientists around the world that are looking, actively looking at this process. One, because it’s beautiful but two, it has a potential find – targets for cancer and neurodegeneration.

So – so, what happens when we knock out this –

[slide titled, loss of atx-2 leads to cell division defects, with two videos of C. elegans cells, one in a control group and one with atx-2 with the D.N.A. highlighted in red and the plasma membrane highlighted in green]

– human disease gene in C. elegans? So, what I have here is I’m labeling the plasma membrane now with the G.F.P. and then also the D.N.A. so we can look at mitosis. For size scale, here’s the worm and here’s the embryo down here, so it’s pretty small. It’s blown up here on the microscope. So, in the normal cells –

[the control side video plays showing normal mitosis]

– see it there, we’re going to look at mitosis, so we’re going into telophase and the – the cleavature is going to pinch in the cell. The cell is larger and this one’s smaller. And now we’re going to look at Ataxin-2. So, we’ve knocked down the gene, we’re going to see what happens.

[the atx-2 side video plays showing the differences in mitosis]

One, we could already see off the bat there’s another little piece of DNA here. This is actually from a failure myosis. So, extra D.N.A. has to be jettisoned out before fertilization. That fails, but I’m going to show you what happens after that. So, if you watch this, you’ll see metaphase. It’s already going into the inner phase, but the cleavage furrow hasn’t pitched in but it’s going to try to pinch all the way down. And it’s going to make an attempt to pinch all the way down. It’s also extremely asymmetric and it’s going to go back up. Most of you probably used a – a – a- balloon animal at a party. Same kind of idea, you kind of twist it. The only way to get it down, you really got to twist it. Well, in the cell it’s the same idea. You pinch down and you try to seal it off. And that’s actually where that little midbody point is. So, the molecules that aren’t getting to seal off the cell aren’t there anymore, and then the cell retracts. And this is a – a cancer cell. So, it’s dividing out of control because it has too much D.N.A. And so, that’s what we can do with this kind of imaging. And so, that was pretty cool.

So, what are we doing now to try to –

[Ahna Skop]

– tackle this neurodegeneration, and my hypothesis that these glial cells are failing in division?

So, we’re collaborating with Shai Shaham’s lab at Rockefeller. And so, –

[slide posing the question, does the loss of atx-2 lead to glia defects? With an illustration of the C. elegans with its nervous system enlarged along with a photo from Ahna’s research]

– the awesome thing about C. elegans as well is in the adult worm, the entire nervous system has been mapped. And that – no organism has that. And that actually was done by my mentor who was formerly here in Wisconsin, named John White. And they mapped all the nervous system, so they know exactly where all the nerves arise.

And so, in this cell, in – in the head of the worm, there’s actually glial cells that support the nerve ring in – in the worm, which allows it to survive in mechanosense and understand it’s environment. And these are just examples of G.F.P. lighting up different glial cells. So, what we’re doing now is trying to knock out –

[Ahna Skop]

– Ataxin-2 to see if we actually have glial – glial cell defects. And we’ve done preliminary data. We – we think that’s actually happening. It’s really, really interesting. The other interesting thing about that is lots of people with neurodegeneration actually lose their sense of smell very early. It’s that early onset idea. And what they think is happening is that inside the glial cells, their endoplasmic reticulum is no longer functioning. And so, we see that actually in the embryos, but we want to look also in the – in the – in the adult nerve -nervous system of the – in the head of the worm. And so, that’s, sort of, where my, in a nutshell, is as easy as I can say what I’m doing in my laboratory.

And so, I want to leave you with my science part and really talk about –

[slide featuring the following quote from Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician, “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” Also noted is that for Ahna beauty inspires curiosity]

– you know, I love what I do partly because, you know, I delight in this because it’s unbelievably beautiful, right? And I love this quote for that reason, you know. “If nature weren’t beautiful, it wouldn’t be worth knowing. And if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” And completely true for me. Again, this beauty –

[Ahna Skop]

– is really inspiring my life and the curiosity.

So, onto my teaching. So, you can imagine someone from an art background how they might approach teaching, right? Or not, you might not imagine it.

Mostly, how many people have been to an art museum?

[wide shot including the audience with several raised hands]

A lot of people. How many people thought they were an artist after they came out of there?

[laughter, as no one in the audience raises their hands]

No, right?

Okay, how many people have picked up clay –

[slide titled, how do I facilitate learning? Featuring two photos, one of a class at an art museum learning from a docent and the second the photo of Ahna’s father in his studio sculpting his football coach]

– and made a sculpture, maybe? Ceramics, yeah? How many people felt more like an artist there? Right? Most people probably say “Yeah.”

[slide animates on a third photo of a students in a large lecture hall]

How many people in a big lecture room like this? Right? Do you think you were a scientist after you sat in a room like this? I didn’t either, right? I didn’t really think this was science. So –

[slide animates on a fourth photo of students in a lab behind microscopes]

– my own experience and my own experience from my background, I had to get in there and see it –

[Ahna Skop]

– and do it in order to learn and understand. And it wasn’t until I had courses like that where I was actively learning and doing stuff. So, that was inherent for me to do that in the classroom as well.

The other part that’s really important to me also, is I always felt that “The only thing that interferes with my learning” –

[slide with a photo of a baby shooting himself in the face with a water pistol and the Albert Einstein quote – The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education]

– “is my education.” It’s a famous quote. I – I put this photo together with it. I think it’s really important. Most of you probably shot yourself in the face with a water gun, right? You probably may never –

[Ahna Skop]

– have done it again. Right?

[laughter]

But you’ve done it to someone else because it’s funny, right? But, you know, education has always been a place where I wasn’t able to get my hands in because a lot of people are lecturing, right? You need to really get students engaged with science by doing.

The other thing driving – driving also the way I teach, is the education system itself. They’re educating –

[slide featuring a quote by Sir Ken Robinson over a shot of a multiple choice test, “The current education system is educating people out of their creativity.” Noting also conformity not diversity of thought is awarded]

– this quote by Ken Robinson is – is saying is that we’re educating out of their creativity. Why? Because we use these horrible things called bubble sheets, right? And the idea is that conformity and not diversity of thought is actually what’s awarded in the classroom. And that’s a horrible thing actually.

[Ahna Skop]

Because everyone needs to fill in the same bubble, right? And so, how do we get around this? Right? What are – what are the thoughts of, like, how to change that? It’s a numbers game.

The other thing that drives me, given I’ll have – my mother is – has native American background, but in addition I have very diverse family, is this problem.

[slide featuring a line graph of Percentage of S.T.E.M. doctorates earned by demographic, showing a dramatic increase in women and international students but really low percentages of all other categories in science and engineering Ph.Ds. Awarded in 2012]

And so, in the National Science Foundation, if you look at the percentage of S.T.E.M. doctorates over time, what has happened is the number of women, like myself, have increased over time, as did the number of international students. But what has stayed the same is the numbers of Hispanics, Blacks, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, less than 5% of all Ph.Ds. So, the question is, why is this happening? So, my idea is, change the way you teach. Right? Simply –

[Ahna Skop]

– we’re losing this because maybe there’s different ways of learning, culturally. Backgrounds, arts are really important in – in – in culture. And so, in trying to include both of those things in the classroom is really important.

The other thing comes from this learning period that a lot of teachers actually look at. So, average student –

[slide featuring an illustration of the Learning Pyramid as regard to average student retention rates noting that Lecture is a very low percentage while practice doing, and teaching others are very high percentages. This graph illustrates what influenced how Ahna designed her course]

– retention rates actually increased if you practiced by doing and discuss and you teach others. Here’s the lecture up at the top, right? That’s the default. You get very little retention by sitting at a lecture like you’re sitting here. You may, hopefully, more. But – but, you know, actually doing things is really important.

So, the other thing, given my diversity –

[new slide featuring a cartoon of a tree behind a row of a bird, a monkey, a penguin, an elephant, a fish in a bowl, a seal and a dog sitting in front of a professor who is behind his desk saying – For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam – Please climb that tree. Noted also is diversity is not just on the outside]

– interest is this. This is a famous picture probably many of you have seen, you know. “For a fair selection, everyone has to take the same exam.” Right? Climb the tree, right? Who’s going to climb the tree? Probably the monkey, right? But the other important thing is that I can have a classroom of all elephants, but the thing is, diversity is not just on the outside, it’s actually what’s inside.

We all have different modes of learning, like myself. I’m dyslexic, I learn by seeing. Some people are really good –

[Ahna Skop]

– at doing. I’m seeing and doing. Some people can just listen and understand it. I have students like that, I was like, “I don’t even know what they’re talking about.” I have to, like, doodle it, right? So, understanding and being very sensitive to the fact that there’s different modes of learning is also equally important to try to get the success rate up of the students.

So, what did I do? I created a course with completely no lectures, where actually –

[slide featuring a photo of one of Ahna’s Genetics 564 classes goofing around and the statement – NO lectures here, how an active and problem-based learning classroom in genomics transformed the confidence, creativity and communication skills of all students]

– the students do the lecturing and – and do the hands-on learning. This is a picture from last year. Unbelievably crazy bunch of students. I take them bowling as sort of fun. I’m going to tell you a little bit about what it is.

[slide featuring a photo of the course description from the U.W.-Madison website for her course – Genetics 564 – capstone in genomics and the website for here class]

If you want to look up more. So, this is the website. It’s genetics564.weebly.com. It’s completely open to the outside world; we have tons of visitors coming. This is from my National Science Foundation award. I created this course to try to see if I can include those students that are falling behind or come in my course. I’ve had dyslexic students, students that have maybe come into my course as a C, they’re often the best students in the class. And I’ll tell you the structure of it.

[new slide titled, Tuesday Presentations, with an overview of what this is – two students present primary literature and review article, prior to the talk – students are taught techniques to visually communicate science, it is peer reviewed and self-assessed]

So, what I do, like I’m doing today, is giving how to give good presentations. I think that’s really important to communicate science. As you can see, what’s happening out in – in – in the public, is science is not being supported. So, what’s happening is scientists aren’t really good at communication. So, I want to be able to try to do that and teach the scientists, the young scientists, how to communicate science. I do that and I learn, prior to the talk, I do a one on one and have them learn to get the visuals down. The students in the audience are also peer-reviewing. We’re all doing it; we’re learning the scientific. We – we are also peer-reviewed on our grants; I want the students to always grade themselves. The amazing thing is students often grade the speakers harder than myself. And so, we all learn together. It’s a – it’s a very welcoming environment.

And the way I teach how to communicate is pretty important. And you’ve been experiencing that right here today.

[new slide titled, Learn to effectively communicate science, with a pie chart showing this should be 55% visual, 38% oral and 7% verbal]

And so, when you – when you effectively communicate science, what you’ve been looking at today, what’s been impacting you in the audience is actually 55% of my talk has been visual. And that’s actually what you’ve been retaining. The rest of it is what I’m saying, that’s the oral part. That’s 38% you’re remembering what I say. And very little, 7% is the verbal. Probably many of you have been to multiple lectures, and it’s been all text, right? You’ve probably been to them where – where the – the professor will read off –

[Ahna Skop]

– the slides. So, there – there is actually research on this that says, if you actually add pictures with words, the retention of ideas goes up –

[new bar graph animates on next to pie chart titled, Retention of ideas, noting that there is only 10% of retention with words only and 65% retention with pictures and words]

– to 65% from 10%. That’s enormous. So, we got to get away from that writing and text because it’s a default, it’s easy. But there are a lot of kids out there, a lot of people are visually stimulated, and they learn that way, that – myself included.

I use a textbook, so the textbook is not a science textbook –

[a photo of Garr Reynolds animates on in the lower left-hand corner along with his teaching tools, Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design, animating on in the lower right-hand of the slide]

– but something called Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design. This was written by Garr Reynolds. He actually helped Steve Jobs become the guy who –

[Ahna Skop]

– who he was. He helped do all of those lectures that you’ve seen Steve Jobs do, amazingly simple. It’s all from Garr Reynolds; I highly recommend it. But I use it every day. A lot of the – the things I’ve been showing you today are coming from these books. I do that with the students.

So, I make it fun for students to learn to communicate. And what I call it is I call it – I call “Please Ahna -Pimp my slides.”

[slide with the phrase “Please Ahna – Pimp my slides” and a logo for Pimp My Slide along with a before photo of a slide with bullet points and a small illustration on it]

Right? So, what I have students do is try to give me – I teach them how to do it in a one-day, sort of, format, hands-on format. And I have them craft their slides as they normally would. And listening to me they come up with a slide like this, right? A small image that you, sitting out there, probably can’t seed or read. And then a lot of text with bullets in, right? Looks pretty standard. Right? So, and then what they do, they send it to me, and I help them try to do that. And the way that – and I ask them, are – do you really need all this stuff? I know you know this information, right? So, why do you have to put the written stuff here. Because you know it, and people are there to listen to you, not read your slides. So, that’s a common fault.

[new “after” image animates on the slide on the right-hand side with a large illustration of the experiment at hand]

So, what happens is I get them to turn it around like this. Is finding a better visual and one word to remind them what they’re talking about, and they project their voice outward, and it – it changes actually the confidence of the student. ‘Cause they know they have to know it in their head instead of rely as a crutch on the slide. And so, it’s actually, really enormously amazing.

[Ahna Skop]

Students will say, “What is the best thing you learned in the class?” And they’ll always tell me, “Confidence.” And that’s actually an amazing thing. After four years at school, they should be confident of having to articulate knowledge to the world themselves and – and being respected for that knowledge. And I – I – that’s what I’m trying to do in that class.

The other part of my class that’s really important is participation, which actually also creates this confidence. And I also doing that for the diversity problem.

[slide titled, Participation and Confidence, with an image of multiple hands raised of differing ethnic backgrounds and the statement – everyone is of value – no previous biases]

I make sure every single student in my class asks a question that day. It’s a class of 20. So, I do that because everyone in that class is of value. It’s not the smartest kid, it’s not the dumbest kid.

[Ahna Skop]

There’s no such thing. There’s no previous biases. I don’t know who the – who has the A coming in or who has the C. Everyone’s participating. And when – when you set a course up that way, it completely changes that C student into an A student.

The other thing that I do which I’m just going to touch on, is I actually change the way I grade. I don’t give them a grade; I give them an A on the first day. And that – what they do throughout the semester is they lose points and so everyone is an A, on top of their game from get go. And that also changes, that’s a mindset theory. Is how you – you – being – it’s all positive and you’re only losing points throughout the semester. And so, it seemingly seems like everyone’s got an A at the beginning and so there’s no stress. And that actually is also equally great for a student. So, if you’re struggling and always think you’re going to be struggling, you’re never going to get to where you need to be. But you – having that positive input is really important.

The other thing I do is have them create a website of a gene or disease –

[slide titled, Gene/Disease Website Project, with a sample website on the left and the points of – Gene or Disease/Trait of their choice, Students do the research (lab and outside class) on data that is unknown, it is published on their website and have a final presentation]

– of their choice. And so, what we do is I teach them how to make websites. They put YouTube videos – and they do research within a lab on a Thursday. And they work on data and – and they choose to work on part of the project that is completely unknown, just like a scientist. They have to find what to work on. And it’s published, they can put it on their resume, and they have a final presentation where they communicate it back out.

[Ahna Skop]

So, what happens in this lab? So, what’s amazing, what happens in this lab, I will give a little demonstration at the beginning, and then they start to teach each other, which is really important part –

[slide with a photo of one student at a computer pointing out information as another student looks on]

– of that retention of knowledge. This is happening constantly. And what happens out of this is –

[new slide featuring a sample student website]

– you get these amazing websites. So, this is one of my first years I had it. So, I – I love this partly because I’m a very – I – I – I love humor and a lot of fun and I want them to – to try to grab attention, right? Immediately you’re grabbed towards, you know George Costanza’s bald, right? He’s funny; he has a – he has a – he’s a classic episode of that. But to real – what – what is really getting to you when you’re trying to communicate your idea. This title seems very crazy, and it probably wouldn’t reel you in if there wasn’t a picture of George Costanza, but that wants you to go in and see what the student has to say. So, I, you know, I – I want them to – to be creative and come up with their own ideas and themes. And we use this platform –

[Ahna Skop]

– called Weebly, which is free and anyone outside the university can see it.

Over the time, themes have got better. Another – I’m going to go back to the slide I just showed you. Is one thing I found –

[return to the slide with the first website sample]

– that was interesting was students don’t realize when they’re doing research is that other people care about their research. And as a scientist that’s really important for me in my success. So, I started putting – I have a food blog, and I understand the importance of a hit map, of who’s looking at your stuff, right? So, if you put hit maps, it’s amazing. So, this one student, the Gene for Speed, still to this day is actively being looked at from people all over the world. That’s, like, enormous for that student. And the cool thing about it’s from the secondary thing that happened from this, is the students see that other people are looking at it, their writing gets better and so I have less to grade.

[laughter]

[Ahna Skop]

And so – so, it actually worked – it actually works wonders. And throughout the semester as a student’s projects get more and more intense and more pages get put up, this – these hits go – these hits actually go up. And it’s amazingly – the confidence level goes amazingly high.

Here’s another – another example of one of these websites. You could see the power –

[slide featuring another student website]

– of a visual. Just finding the right visual, you know. She’s looking at aggression, the D.N.A. – what’s the genetics of aggression? Again, all of these people are coming to look at these sites and this is year in and year out.

So –

[new slide titled – Findings – science is not all facts! – noting that it is a process that informs critical decisions and ideas. Additionally, the following points are made – use your classroom as a laboratory, create engaging environments that require students to confront the unknown and the uncomfortable, encourage creativity, how to use information, effectively communicate ideas and solve problems and that education should affect the way you think]

– what did I learn from all this, right? It’s – science is not all about facts. I learned that; it’s not about memorizing things, right? It’s a process that informs critical decisions and ideas, right? And I want to encourage, you know, lots of faculty and teachers out there to use your classroom as a laboratory. I think it’s really important to try out new things that work. Alright? And then create engaging environments that require students confront the unknown. And confronting the unknown is really important because you realize that you might be able to find something that no one has ever thought before. And that’s what really exciting about science, especially for me. And then encourage them and give them ability to use their creativity in ever – in any which way they want. How to use the information and effectively communicate the ideas and solve problems, which is what they’re going to do after they graduate, right? So, that’s my –

[Ahna Skop]

– that’s, sort of, my philosophy, you should really educate how people are going to think and – and attack the world. You can have the facts but if you don’t know how to communicate and solve the problem, you’re not gonna – you’re not going to go anywhere, right? So, that’s my – that’s my philosophy.

So, now to, sort of, the end part of my talk.

[return to the slide featuring the statement science as art]

Science as art. So, I grew up in the household of artists. So, when I came here as a grad student, I began to go –

[Ahna Skop]

– to scientific conferences. And it was clear that there – there was, sort of, an art component, but I saw logos happening. And then I started doing logos for meetings. So, this was one of my first logos. And I – I was begin –

[slide featuring various C. elegans meeting logos created by Ahna, some using C. elegans shaped like the sun or a strand of D.N.A. or a wave or inspired by Native American art]

– this is for the worm that you saw. So, it was all iterations of – of – and I became very famous for them, this is probably one of the most famous images in – in my model organism all over the world, everyone knows I’ve done these. And so, I gained a lot of confidence from that. I realized I could use my skills in the arts to help the scientific community communicate or at least to have fun.

[new slide featuring an illustration of an eye and underneath it at tree diagram for bacteria, archaea and eucaryota and the quote – The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.]

Throughout grad school I also was keenly aware that there is very little that – that the normal public sees or yourself can see with the naked eye. But as scientists, the tree of life, we often get to see a lot of these things. And I’m keenly aware as a scientist who’s – who’s funded publicly, that if we could see all these beautiful organisms here, why can’t we share it with the public, right? And so, I put my ideas together of growing up in a household of artists and – and doing art shows, and I came up –

[new slide titled, C. elegans (Worm) Art Show, featuring a photo of the C. elegans worm and the statement that in 1997 she started the first worm art show as a grad student and was told that she was making a big mistake doing an art show. It is now an ongoing event at the national C. elegans meetings having press in Science, The Scientist and G.S.A. newletters]

– with a C. elegans worm art show, right? So, I started as grad student. I was told in my lab that I’m “making a huge mistake.” I’m a big mistake, it’ll ruin your career for life, right? I’m still here, right? So, and it’s now an ongoing event. This is my 20th year that I’m doing this summer. It’s gotten a lot of press in a lot of scientist magazines. And so, I – this is, sort of –

[Ahna Skop]

– what I became famous for. And so, when I went up on the job market, most people introduced me as “The girl who does the art show but also is an amazing scientist.” So, it was a really cool marketing tool for me. But for me it’s just a passion. It came from my life – this is a normal part of my life. That visual and art.

So, I’m going to show you some examples. It also was part of that soul searching again, where I struggled that – to find a – a mentor that really understood my creative level. I found other scientists, so this is my first year, Steve Johnson’s –

[slide featuring a photo of a stained-glass sculpture of a C. elegans by Steve Johnson]

– now professor. This is a C. elegans, stained glass C. elegans, right? People love this nematode. It’s loved by all. It’s amazingly beautiful.

[new slide featuring fabric art of two C. elegans mating]

Here’s another one. This is worms having sex. On a boutique arena.

[new slide with several photos of C. elegans art]

Some people get inspired by Andy Wormhol; this is a real science. People are getting inspired. These are things that aren’t shared in – in publications, but it’s really great at engaging the public because they know what that is, right? They’ve seen it.

[new slide featuring a photo of the C. elegans gonad]

This is probably the most beautiful gonad you’ll probably look at. This is C. elegan’s gonad, this is all the D.N.A. labeled in the hermaphrodite. And Abby Dernberg is my first Howard Hughes investigator who, she won the very first art show. And so, all the people I’ve showed you have all become faculty members. So, it became over the years a testament to the fact that people who are – who are amazing –

[Ahna Skop]

– at doing imaging and art are also really good at science. And so, that made me feel really good that I was in the right group and – and crowd.

So, here’s a few things that I’ve done. These look like lips, but these are gonad lips, right?

[slide featuring Ahna’s art of C. elegans gonads shaped like lips]

Something you wouldn’t imagine.

[new slide with a photo of an yellow circle with three coffee beans in it and a very tiny C. elegans in for scale]

Anyone want to guess what this might be? There’s the little worm here.

Anything?

What jumps out at you?

[Audience member]

Coffee beans?

[Ahna Skop]

Coffee beans, I always get coffee beans. Looks like a U.F.O., maybe?

These are actually air bubbles. So, these are air bubbles, so these are on petri plates on agar. And so, the amazing thing is that the time and temperature to solidify the agar amazingly made these air bubbles at a perfect U.F.O. shape. And I think sometimes when you’re looking down the microscope some days, things, you know, you jump back, and you try to wonder how that happened. And you’re like, “What the heck is it?”, “Is it a coffee bean?”, “Is it a U.F.O.?” But it puts your place in the world. You know, you see the worm and it’s sort of this extraterrestrial thing. But the great thing about an example of image like that, the public knows what a U.F.O. is, the public knows what the coffee bean is, and so if you can introduce them to something they know and then give them the scary thing called the nematode that is everywhere on the earth, you can connect them and talk to them about science. And so, that’s what’s really been great about these art shows.

[new slide with the words – shows, installations and collaborations and the quote from Edgar Degas – Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.]

From these – from these shows, when I became a faculty back here, given a little more opportunities, so I came back here and my lab is in the next building over, which is a little newer than we are here. And I came here, and I walked in the foyer and was like –

[Ahna Skop]

– “Oh my God, I can’t work here.” It was all white walls, giant white walls. I was like this is impossible, a daughter of an artist – I can’t be in a building with nothing on the wall. So, I walked myself up to the dean’s office and I said, “I got an idea. I would like to do a scientific art installation in the building.” And I was given $15,000. I’ve never been given that amount of money which – just by talking. So, I – if you’ve walked into the foyer over there, that is the installation I did of all the science art that – that is coming from our department. And now busloads of students come through here and see that science. And so, this is what it looks like. You maybe have seen this if you walked in through the other door.

So, from that –

[slide with a photo of the science art installation in the U.W.-Madison Genetics Building foyer]

– the art department got word of that, and I went to a couple talks down in the art department. And they said to me, “Omigosh, you’ve been doing these shows, we all know who you are. You know, let’s do something together.”

[Ahna Skop]

So, we ended up doing this tiny scientific art show which was at the airport –

[slide titled, TINY – Scientific Art Show, with some small samples of the art a as well as a photo of one of the display cases at the Madison airport. Also noted is that it was a collaboration between scientists from the U.W.-Madison campus and the Tandem Press and it received press attention from The Newshour Online, N.P.R., PBS.org, the Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Sentinel and USA Today]

– in 2009 to 2010. This is the most popular show that’s ever been in the airport, partly because there were all of these awesome, beautiful images but no one knew what they are, so you had to really go look around and guess what they were.

There was an overflowing comment box, of like, “This is amazing, I want to see more.” And these were all images from the university. So again, this idea of engaging with the public. And there are a lot of us on campus that do imaging, who are part of this show, that have been – just got enormous support. And also, the Alumni Association as well, thought this was great, to connect with those outside.

Here’s –

[slide featuring a photo of zinc oxide nanorods as seen through a microscope]

– an example of a few things that showed up here. I – I love this image because, you know, it looks like a bunch of needles. What is this? It’s actually zinc oxide nanorods. You may not know what it is, but it makes – its – it’s what’s in the solar cells and collects the sun. Amazingly beautiful at this scale in E.M. here.

[new slide featuring a photo of a fruit fly embryo through a microscope]

This is a drosophila fruit fly embryo by Sean Carroll. This is your fruit fly that eats your bananas. This is probably the most beautiful thing that eats your bananas, right? So, this is an embryo where all these genes are expressed in different stripes. And this ended up on the front cover of the New York Times one Easter, thinking it’s an Easter egg development.

[laughter]

That’s also over on that wall.

[new slide featuring an electron microscope image of a trichome]

This is probably – I – I love this image a lot. I’m – I’m not a plant biologist. So, this is on a plant. Does anybody know what this is? Trichome, yay, we got it. So, if you’ve hiked in the woods and you got attacked by a plant, this is the thing that attacks you. So, it is – it looks extraterrestrial, right? It actually comes from this little mustard plant that all scientists, a lot of people on this campus use, to do genetics. And it’s been sequenced. And so, this is on – on the underside of the leaf. And the trichomes are used, actually, to fend off any herbivores that are going to eat the plants. And so, you can imagine if you’re a bug about that size, this is going to be a scary thing to keep away the plants. So, this – these show – this show led to something called the Cool Science Image Competition.

[Ahna Skop]

It’s in its I think seventh year. This was our winner last year. This looked like a Monet.

[slide with a microscopic view of the blood vessels in the eye]

I saw this come through and I was like, “Holy cow!”, right? “Amazing!” But this is actually blood vessels in the eye, in the retina. And so, I was like, I – you know, “Some things you think you know”, and then you see this and you’re like “Wow!” I just totally – can destroy your – your mind, and you go, “This is amazing!” Right? But people love this for that reason. It looked like Monet, but it was in your eye, it’s a teachable moment.

I’m going to tell you who the winners were this year.

[Ahna Skop]

We’re just releasing – releasing them tomorrow, for the 2017 winners. These are, sort of, the top three that I think are pretty cool. So, the – this is your tongue.

[slide titled, 2017 Cool Science Image Winners, featuring three photos, one of a tongue, one of gold melting and one of a cerebellum]

So, the nuclei in your tongue are, sort of, lined up in all these different, sort of, patterns. I love this. This is a picture of gold melting. And then this is a picture of your cerebellum, the thing I work on. It, sort of, looks, sort of, extraterrestrial. So, unbelievably amazing things are, you know, in your body, around every day and that don’t get seen, but also funded by taxpayers. And so, this is a great way, this is a great way, this is your taxpayer dollars at work.

[Ahna Skop]

But they’re used for reasons. We need to see what’s in there at – at different levels of microscopy to see what’s happening, you know, when things go wrong. So that’s what they’re for. But these are shared so that we get engaged with science.

So, from all these art shows, I have been able to get a lot of interaction with artists. So, people have seen my displays, but I had students come, who are in the art department, say, “Hey, I – I heard you love art, I never knew a scientist who love art.” So, I said, “Sure, come to my lab.” So, I had an undergrad, my very first artist in the lab was Chanel Matsunami Govreau. She got a Guggenheim Fellowship. So, for – for artists, this is a really big deal. She was an undergrad in the lab –

[slide featuring a photo of Chanel Matsunami Govreau, performance artist and costume designer, and a photo of her exhibition Differentiate]

– and actually, a performance artist and costume designer. I would consider her, sort of, a Lady Gaga-ish kind of person. She – she used this fellowship; she came to my lab. She looked at worms, she came every Friday. And she saw that the skin of the worm was in this pattern and she made this fabric that became part of her show. And so, it was really awesome to have this artist interacting with the scientist. So, there – she was looking at things and seeing things that my students weren’t seeing. And so, there was this mutual idea, like, “Omigosh, different – different eyes on the same thing can often come out amazing results.”

[new slide titled, Translation scientific art show, featuring a photograph of the art installation on the second floor of the U.W.-Madison Genetics Hall, with an inset photo of the artist, Angela Johnson]

Since then, I’m – I’m now in as a affiliate in the U.W. – U.W.-Madison Art Institute. And so, I can actually train art students in my lab. Angela Johnson just got her M.F.A. last year. She’s a photographer, so if you ever come visit, you can visit my lab on the second floor. These are images from zebra fish from another scientist on my floor. And she’s mounted them, and it is sort of antiqued the pictures of the zebra fish embryos developing. So, my next-door neighbor also works on cell division, but in zebra fish embryos. And she got really attracted to this taking different photos of them and visualizing them in another way. But again, another way to engage with the public.

Her opening, she had her M.A. opening here, we had 150 people who had never even set foot in a scientific building before. And so that’s the power of art to engage. A lot of people on the street don’t know that labs are open, they can come visit –

[Ahna Skop]

– it is their money. It’s taxpayer money. So, this is a great way to engage with the public.

So, I want to just, sort of, say, is it just me? Right? Am – am I the super-creative person? And a lot of scientists, and many of you out there are like, “Well, is this – has this been quantified?” Right? Someone alerted me to this article. And what’s really interesting is that scientists tend to have hobbies –

[slide titled, Scientists tends to have hobbies in music and photography, with six bar graphs comparing scientists to the general population in Arts, Crafts, Music, Performance, Photo and Writing, showing more scientists are involved in Photo and Music than the general population]

– in music and photography than the general U.S. population. So, that’s a really actually interesting. Right? So, here we have arts, crafts, music, you know, photo and writing. And so, scientists, and I have, you know – a lot of people, are really interested in music, like myself, and photography. So, I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.”

[new slide titled, Nobel winners have hobbies in arts, crafts, music and writing more than the average scientist, with the same six bar graphs and adding in a bar for Nobel winning scientists showing them ahead in almost all categories]

But if you look at Nobel prize winners, they tend to have the hobbies – it complete – it shifts a little bit. They tend to have hobbies in the arts and crafts in addition to music, and also writing. So, there’s interesting things that are going on here. And what they found –

[new slide titled, Compared to scientists in general, award-winning scientists are more likely to have a hobby in the arts, with a bar graph comparing general scientists to members of the National Academy, Royal Society and Nobel prize winners, showing the latter 2.8 times more likely to have a hobby in the arts than a general scientist]

– is that in general, compared to other scientists, Nobel Prize award-winning scientists here are 2 times – 8 – 2.8 times more likely to have a – a hobby in the arts. And so, that’s really interesting. And so, it says that that creative sense is really important for discovery.

[Ahna Skop]

And someone like myself who comes from a – an art background should be here because there’s discoveries being made that are really important for human health and welfare across the world.

So, a lot of people ask me, you know, “What is it about art that makes scientists more productive and successful?” I often get this.

[slide asking the question, “What is it about art that makes scientists more productive and successful?”, with three circular illustrations and the quote by the metallurgist Cyril Stanley Smith, “The richest aspects of any large and complicated problem arise from factors that cannot be measured easily, it at all. For these, the artist’s approach, uncertain though it inevitably is, seem to find and convey more meaning.”]

And so, I love this quote, as you may have seen, I have a lot of quotes. So, this is a picture of – of a -a – a genome that’s been visualized in a very unique way. So, the greatest thing – so, this – this quote says, “The richest aspects of any large, complicated problem arise from factors that cannot be measured easily, if at all. For these, the artist’s approach, uncertain, though it inevitably is, seems to find – find and convey more meaning.” So, that is – that is the key here. So, someone who is looking at computational data decide to visualize it in a different way, and they’re able to find connections between genes and the genome –

[Ahna Skop]

– that they never thought before. So, it’s a great example of where science and art is really important. And data visualization is even more important nowadays. You know, in science, but a lot of people aren’t trained in the arts. And so, that’s why I need – I think it’s really important to make sure that all of our scientists get art training and also children from a really young age.

So, what have I learned about all these art shows?

[slide titled, “What have I learned so far?”, with a list of takeaways for the day below]

Is that you can use science and art to inspire and engage the public. And artists can communicate complex ideas to a wide variety of audience. You know, the coffee beans is really important. And working with artists can actually inspire new ideas within the laboratory. And then generally, scientists are pretty creative people. You know, I feel like I’m in the same group. I feel comfort and welcome, especially when I go to science meetings it’s like an oozing of creativity. And I really think you – you need to encourage students to pursue art and science and that’s what leads to discoveries. And just to end on things –

[slide with the statement “Things I do outside of lab”]

– if you think I don’t have any time in my day, I do do something on the outside.

[Ahna Skop]

And it was in, sort of, my little bio. So, I have a food blog. I make cakes that look like mitosis.

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of cupcakes that Ahna has made with the frosting depicting mitosis]

I make a lot of cakes that are scientific cakes. And so, it is my passion, I love cooking, I often review restaurants around Madison. But it’s always nice to have a hobby.

[Ahna Skop]

I like to draw in sugar sometimes. This is just an example of that. I often make cupcakes or cakes that look like a paper that I’ve just published, so students like that. So, it’s my gift for their hard work. I put it up there. I – I cook and bake a lot of different things. So, if you’re interested, go, you can certainly follow me and go look at my blog.

So, I – I want to leave, I have a few last slides. I want to leave you with this.

[slide featuring a photo of Steve Jobs and the quote, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just SAW something. It seemed OBVIOUS to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”]

I – I love this quote by Steve Jobs. It, sort of, sums up “how did I put all of this together”, right? So, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experience they had and synthesize new things.” So, many of you know why this thing is so amazing –

[Ahna Skop]

– is because he studied Zen philosophy –

[holding up her iPhone]

– and that button is the Zen symbol, right? And so, putting those two ideas together made people love this thing and its simplicity, right? And that itself is Zen. And so, that’s a perfect example of if you have an interest in your background, how it feeds into your science and into the design. And it’s really important. And for me, I love this – I found this Venn diagram –

[slide of a Venn diagram where one circle is Science, and one circle is Art and the intersection of the two circles is labeled Wonder. Additionally, there is the word success with an arrow pointing towards the part of the diagram labeled Wonder]

for me, I found this success at – at the overlap between science and art, and that sense of wonder is really important to me.

[new slide with the statement, “Being able to see things differently than other people doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you valuable.”]

And most importantly, I realize after all of this, was I too creative? No, and being able to see things differently than other people doesn’t make you a crazy person or not welcome. It really makes you valuable.

[Ahna Skop]

So, thank you.

[applause]