Bioartography (my job as art)

When I'm not running my shop on Etsy my full time job is as a graduate student. I study developmental biology. The goal of my research is to better understand how the skeleton develops so that new strategies can be designed for bone healing and repair.

One thing that I really love about my work is the overlap of science and art. I spend a lot of time looking at tissue sections under the microscope to examine the expression of specific proteins. This is an image that I captured of a section that shows the neural tube, kidney, and somites (what will become vertebrae). It is amazing to me how beautiful biology is.

This image is part of the bioartography collection from the University of Michigan's Center for Organogenesis. Scientists from the university submit photographs that they have taken during the process of their research and a panel of artists and professors chooses the most remarkable and beautiful images to be sold. All proceeds go towards funding graduate students and post docs.

You can take a look at the rest of the collection here https://bioartography.myshopify.com/

Gastric Rainbow

(my favorite bioartography piece)