How ‘Science Interpreters’ Make Hidden Science Visible

A cell animator and a museum designer tell us how they translate scientific findings into visual experiences.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:14Ira Flatow?

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• 0:30Flora Lichtman?

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• 1:20Flora Lichtman?

  This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichtman. Today on the podcast, we're bringing you a live show from the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City. We're talking about how you bring science to life for broad audiences.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Instead of a frozen moment in time, you can really tell a story. And at its essence, that is what exhibits do. They help scientists and researchers tell stories.

• 1:46Flora Lichtman?

  I want to do an experiment. Close your eyes and imagine diving into a cell. You're paddling around in the cytoplasm. You're climbing up on a mitochondria. If you're having a hard time picturing this, that's OK. There are professionals who do this for a living. Our next guests are expert science interpreters. They take the results section of a research paper and translate it into something tangible, like a 40-foot-tall dinosaur skeleton or a 3D animation of cellular machinery that would be too small to see. Here to tell us how they bring science to life are Dr. Janet Iwasa, head of the University of Utah's Animation Lab and Director of the Genetic

• 2:30Flora Lichtman?

  Science Learning Center, and Tim Lee, Director of Exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Welcome to you both to Science Friday.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 2:38Flora Lichtman?

  Thank you so much. OK, Tim, I feel like you have a lot of people's dream job. When you were a kid and other kids were like, "I want to be a fireman," or a marine biologist, were you like, "No, I want to make dioramas?"

• 2:51Speaker 03

  It was actually quite accidental, but inevitable. If you would have asked me as a six-year-old, I would have said I was going to follow in my immigrant dad's footsteps and become a doctor, a brain surgeon. But the signs were there. I loved going to museums with my family. I loved dioramas. I had a sketchbook of all the things that I observed, and it helped me make sense of it. The wondrous world around me, all the different landscapes and things that I saw. And I also collected things. I had a massive collection of objects. And depending on how precious I thought they were, sometimes I'd even ask my friends to wash their hands before they touched them.

• 3:35Flora Lichtman?

  You had your own personal collection, and it was white-glove service only.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah.

• 3:40Flora Lichtman?

  You know, I go to AMNH often, the American Museum of Natural History, near where I live, a lot with my kids, and I still love the diorama so much. Why do you think the dioramas have such a hold on us?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  I was always that kid that was looking for the assignment to add a diorama. So if it was a book report, if it was a science report, there had to be a diorama. But I think it's really our curiosity about our land and where so many of our stories come from. It helps us imagine and immerse ourselves in a moment of time that really starts to capture the imagination. And dioramas are a classic. They've been there forever. It's one of the most pure forms of natural history display.

• 4:26Flora Lichtman?

  Janet, you're a scientist, and I heard you got into your line of work animating science at a lab meeting.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. So I was studying cell biology in graduate school when I was studying for my PhD. And in cell biology and molecular biology in general, the way that we communicate ideas most often is by drawing like circles and squares and arrows. And we're like, these are molecules, and this is what they do.

• 4:54Flora Lichtman?

  Like a stick figure.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Like a stick figure, like a very simplistic stick figure. But what we're actually studying is super complex. They're very, very dynamic, and they have real shape. And they're doing something super interesting in a very crowded environment. And you know, the first time I saw an animation of a molecular process was during group meeting, which is when the labs get together and one person from the lab shares, you know, their data. And so one of the lab meetings I went to when I was in grad school, they shared this animation of how they thought one of these proteins worked. And it made me realize that the stick figures don't work for me. Like, I think I really need something a little bit with that. Animation really helped me understand how things worked.

• 5:40Flora Lichtman?

  So how does your lab work? Do researchers come to you from your institution, from other places and say, I've got this research, can you help me animate it? Or what's the process?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that is a part of the process. So we have, I have postdocs in my lab who are interested in, we basically do collaborations with researchers around the world. And they often have a specific kind of molecular process they've been studying for years, sometimes decades. Yeah, and they come to us saying, you know, we have this idea, we have a movie in our heads of how we think this thing works, but we have no way of creating this, being able to show people what we think. So yeah, so we help them with that process.

• 6:19Flora Lichtman?

  So you have to get that movie out of their head.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's a lot of really just understanding what is that movie? And then trying to figure out, okay, now that we understand what they think is happening, how do we use these traditional animation tools to do something that it was never really meant to do? Because we use software that's from Hollywood, that's really made for animating like superheroes, you know, Pixar kind of movies.

• 6:41Flora Lichtman?

  Yes.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  And then we use that software and we're like, okay, how do we, how do we make that, you know, animate a virus, for example?

• 6:47Flora Lichtman?

  That's so cool. Tim, you know, one of the things you've been working on is updating the diorama, like diorama 2.0. Tell me about projection mapping.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. So can I tell you a little story? So imagine a day like any other day at the Natural History Museum of Utah. I was at my desk on the fifth floor and I was probably designing a really cool exhibit when all of a sudden I got a radio call from one of our educators that said, "Tim, we have an issue in our diorama section. You have to come check it out."

• 7:22Flora Lichtman?

  That's always the call you want to get, I'm sure.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So I hustled down to the fourth floor. This is our life gallery. And I see a classroom of probably seven, eight-year-olds that are actually in our dioramas. Our dioramas don't have glass in front of them. They're accessible. And the kids were so engaged and so amazed by the different ecosystems that they represented that they were in there exploring the cacti, the hummingbirds, the elk. And that actually, I could have been horrified, but I was inspired because I saw the opportunity that dioramas could be a lot more. So I started to think about what we could bring to that traditional

• 8:06Speaker 03

  form. We could embed live animals. We could embed sound and scent and projection mapping. And what projection mapping is, is filming animals, in this case, and then projecting them onto the diorama. So it really activates the diorama. And instead of a frozen moment in time, you can really tell a story. And at its essence, that is what exhibits do. They help scientists and researchers tell stories.

• 8:37Flora Lichtman?

  What was it like to film the animals?

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. That was a challenge. Um, so, you know, I've seen a few BBC documentaries and I thought this should be pretty easy. So, one of the first things we do when we, um, make exhibits is we make a team. So, I knew I had to surround myself with filmmakers who had some green screen, um, experience. But really, animals are animals. So, we created a script for foxes, raccoons, birds. But actually, Florrie, can you guess what animal we had most trouble with?

• 9:10Flora Lichtman?

  Does anyone have a guess?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Cats, yes. You win.

• 9:16Flora Lichtman?

  Anyone who has a cat, actually, would probably guess a cat.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  The cat was completely uncooperative.

• 9:26Flora Lichtman?

  After the break, how visualizing science can make researchers go back to the drawing board.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  They'll watch the animation and they'll be like, "But that's not how I thought it would happen. We need to go back and do some experiments."

• 9:38Flora Lichtman?

  Stay with us.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  Science Friday is supported by PBS, presenting Going Wild. If you love learning about the natural world and meeting the scientists who help us understand it, be sure to check out the new season of Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant. It's the chart-topping and Webby Award-winning podcast from the folks at Nature on PBS, now with a video companion series. In this season of Going Wild, host acclaimed wildlife ecologist Dr. Ray Wynn Grant heads out into the field to explore the animals, people, and stories that make nature worth saving. Stops include a hibernating black bear den in Arkansas and an underwater shipwreck site off the Florida coast. If you're looking for a place to start, check out the season's debut episode, where Ray joins beloved biologist and influencer Jordan King in the Florida Everglades to learn

• 10:27Speaker 00

  about his unlikely journey into science and how to study a wetland when it's not very, well, wet. So, don't miss out. Follow Going Wild with Dr. Ray Wynn Grant on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  And from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, working to enhance public understanding of science, technology, and economics in the modern world.

• 10:54Flora Lichtman?

  Janet, do you have any animation pet peeves?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Hmm, I guess, you know, there are sometimes, you know, so color is an arbitrary choice in molecular animation because, you know, molecules, most of them are smaller than the wavelength of light, and so they actually don't have color. And we often like to choose nice colors for our animations, but there have been times when people are like, "No, we want the most garish colors possible."

• 11:20Flora Lichtman?

  The researchers are like neon, orange.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. Everything neon. And we're like, "Okay." But yeah, so there are sometimes like...

• 11:30Flora Lichtman?

  What about the popular versions of science animations?

• 11:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, that can be probably, so when you say "popular," do you mean like things that appear on science fiction?

• 11:40Flora Lichtman?

  Shows, TV.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  And movies?

• 11:41Flora Lichtman?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, so my kids would, who are here, would probably complain that they cannot watch, you know, if there is any kind of part of a Phil, a science film or science fiction film that has something where they zoom into DNA and it's mutating, I will always be complaining about that structure. Because the structures are available, they could use real structures, but they never do. So, so yeah, so things like that. I think I am probably the worst person to watch those kind of movies with because I'm always like just muttering to myself and kind of...

• 12:13Flora Lichtman?

  I mean, you're visualizing things that are too small to image, right? Do you have to take create, like, do you take creative liberties? Are there places where you get to, I don't know, where you use your imagination?

• 12:25Speaker 04

  I would say that, you know, so most of our projects are really in close collaboration with researchers who have been studying something for years or decades. And the way that people come up with these hypotheses, these kind of, the movies that play on their heads, are from their own data, but also from data from the community, and a lot of kind of indirect information. And so they're kind of piecing together this story based on that. And so the way I think about our animations is it's often a reflection, an individual reflection of somebody's hypothesis that they've developed in their own head over the course of these years and decades. And everyone, even in the same field, might have a slightly different version of that movie. Yeah.

• 13:06Flora Lichtman?

  Do they understand it better after they see your work?

• 13:08Speaker 04

  I think sometimes people realize that, you know, it's an intuition builder. So they'll watch the animation and they'll be like, but that's not how I thought it would happen. And so, but you know, that's exactly how they described it. And they're like, we need to go back and do some experiments to figure out whether, because there's something missing here. So sometimes it does build that intuition and sometimes just building the animation reveals issues, that things don't quite fit together the way they expect.

• 13:34Flora Lichtman?

  Tim, how do you think about the role of museums in the future?

• 13:38Speaker 03

  I think involving our communities is a big part of the future of museums. Not only so that young kids can see themselves as scientists, but also so they can participate in science. So there are community science projects out there that our visitors can play a role in and contribute to. I think that's a big part of the future of museums. And then I also think that showing that scientists don't look one way, that they can look a lot of different ways, so that anyone can identify with that story and see that science isn't apart from your day to the life, it is part of your life.

• 14:20Flora Lichtman?

  We've got a question from the audience. Go right ahead.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  Hi there. My name is Caroline and I'm a recent University of Utah graduate in genetics and genomics. So I am very familiar with some of both of your work. And a lot of the researchers I worked with showed us the animations, but I'm recognizing and noticing that I feel like I didn't see lots of that when I was growing up and studying science, and I feel like that would have been really nice to see. My question for you is, are there current initiatives to get these animations more into younger institutions and schools?

• 14:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, yeah, so I've definitely collaborated with textbook publishers to create animations that are incorporated in there. And I think with a move towards digital publishing, it's becoming a lot more popular to consider how do we make these things more engaging. The other, the other kind of plug I'm going to put out there is that I'm now Director of the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah. And if you go to our website, so learn-genetics.utah.edu is free. We do a lot of middle school and high school level science education. It's used in classrooms around the country. And there are a ton of really great animations and games on there that teach

• 15:42Speaker 04

  all levels of science, all different, not just genetics, we also have geology. But yeah, and so I'm hoping to also incorporate some of those molecular animations into our resources on learn dot genetics.

• 15:55Flora Lichtman?

  We've got a lot of questions from the crowd, let's go to one more.

• 15:57Speaker 07

  Hi, my name is Juan Han, I wanted to go ahead and then ask, since so many of these components, like organelles and other features of a cell are so miniscule, for the things that we are able to visualize through, for example, scanning or transmission electron microscopy, how do you reconcile these images that we're able to see with the naked eye with what the researchers have envisioned? And what's maybe like a recent example of that that you've worked on?

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so a lot of our animations, we combine things at different scales. So like you mentioned, some things we have that are visible with light, and some things are much smaller. So what we generally do is we combine all of those different types of data sources. So molecular level things usually require one type of experimental data. Looking at organelles is usually a different kind, and cells is a different kind. So we usually kind of just combine all of those things to create a multi-scale visualization of basically what's happening inside cells, to give life to those molecules, to provide them the context of the organelles. But yeah, it's a great question. I think a lot of the work that we do is about the synthesis of all of this data.

• 17:13Flora Lichtman?

  You know, we know that trust in science has declined in recent years, and in expertise and institutions. Do you feel like your work has a role to play in this? And I want to hear from you both, I'll start with you, Tim.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%. Museums are something that kids start to experience at such an early age, yet they provide an opportunity to bring science to everyone's lives at any age. That intergenerational learning and experiencing is so, so big. We have collections that we use to draw upon to tell stories of research and science, current and in the past. We involve our communities as well to participate in science, to show that they can be contributors, even if you don't feel like you are part of it, that there is a voice for you in science. And, you know, the ongoing pursuit of knowledge to better

• 18:14Speaker 03

  understand our place within the natural world and to plan for our future is something that museums can be the interface for. So, I see museums as community centers. I see them as places where people can raise questions and use science and collections to help answer them. And I see them as places which, you know, will really take science and show that this is something that we have to, you know, provide for every generation.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I, you know, I actually went to a program at the Natural History Museum that taught scientists how to communicate their research to the public. And, you know, that's a great experience. And I think that's kind of indicative of, I think, what, you know, maybe more scientists should be thinking about doing, you know. The animations are about communicating our research to a broader audience. And we can probably maybe do a better job getting out there and trying to make sure that we are really trying to communicate our research as well as we can through museums, collaborations with museums, using social media, you know, using animations and visualizations to make kind of the things that are kind of hard to access a little bit more accessible.

• 19:25Flora Lichtman?

  Well, thank you for making your work so accessible tonight. I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 19:31Flora Lichtman?

  Dr. Janet Owassa, professor of biosciences, who runs the University of Utah's Animation Lab, and Tim Lee, director of exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Utah.

• 19:48Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, Flora here. One of my favorite parts about working on Science Friday is getting to interact with you. Y'all remind me every day that no matter what pops up as I doom scroll, the world is actually filled with curious, smart, hilarious people. And at Science Friday, we depend on you in lots of different ways. You make the show better with your questions and your comments and your insights. And we've always depended on your support to keep the lights on. As you probably know, because you listen to this podcast, it is a tenuous time for science and for independently-produced public media. So listener support is now more crucial than ever. And it doesn't even need to be

• 20:31Flora Lichtman?

  a lot. If every listener gave just $2, Science Friday would be funded for the year. I'm not kidding. If Science Friday is something that adds value to your life and you can swing it, please go to sciencefriday.com/support to make your donation today. That's sciencefriday.com/support. And thanks.

• 20:54Flora Lichtman?

  And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make this show happen, including

• 21:00Speaker 08

  John Dinkowski.

• 21:02Flora Lichtman?

  Annie Nero.

• 21:03Speaker 08

  Jason Rosenberg.

• 21:05Flora Lichtman?

  Rasha Reedy. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.