Creative Gallery
“There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity isn’t benign. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death or suffocated by resentment and fear.” — Lecturer, Brené Brown
Acrylic Paintings:
Featuring Volvox— a spherical green algae species , abstract swatch sceneries, and the ending life stages of a star.
Hover over the Volvox paintings to see them glow!
2-panel Volvox
Fibonacci Series
With Space to Grow
With Space to Grow is a painting I finished in June of 2021 to commemorate the microorganisms that have led my academic career throughout gaining my B.S. from Iowa State University and the journey into my future goals.
The painting develops in chronological order from the bottom left which represents the beginning of my microbiology degree and travels upwards through defining moments of my research past, work experience, NSF grant proposal, and the COVID-19 pandemic. On the right side shows my intentions of moving to Seattle, WA afront a purple glow representing the University of Washington. These all build-up to the long-term goal of undertaking research questions in the realm of astrobiology in the upper right, featuring Jupiter, Io, and Europa in the blackness of space.
Microbiology Club:
A wonderfully creative outlet to show creativity through science, including a Block & Bridle Cake Auction to support animal sciences scholarships, a multi-department Agar Art competition, cookie decorating, and edible Petri plates for young kids.
Fundraiser Cake
To support Animal Sciences students, an annual cake auction takes place through the Block & Bridle Club. Each organization within the Iowa State University College of Agriculture have the chance to submit a cake and contribute to the auction items. Above is Microbiology Clubs' 2019 creation!
Agar Art!
Who knew amino acid mutagenesis could be so beautiful?? The array of colors seen above are the bacterial color pallets that I genetically created from coral chromoprotein knockouts in preparation for the first annual Agar Art Competition.
← Left: Club-fermented carbonated drinks! We made cream soda, fizzy fruit juice (grape and Hawaiian Punch), and root beer to learn about yeast digestion in relation to common consumable products.
Project Deliverables:
Left- Cholera: This 3-fold brochure was created for a Medical Microbiology course taught by Dr. Joan Cunnick to inform a general audience about Cholera. First, describing the diesease-causing organism and who is at risk, followed by symptoms, treatment, and prevention options. This project won a “Best Execution” award.
Right- Vaccination/Immunizations: These slides exhibit a snapshot of my final presentation to a panel of community health representatives from the Ministry of Health while in Botswana, Africa. My five-month examination of their public health adherence and guidelines allowed me to praise their strict childhood immunization regime, as it showed a noticeable reduction in preventable diseases as compared to other countries.
Above- Guess the Surface: The Petri plates revealed above are a part of a competitive game show I created for a Microbiology Club meeting to test small-group collaboration, reasoning, and knowledge of surface growth. Through this activity, I was able to explain that not all organismal growth is a hazard to our health, and encourage discussion between newcomers of microbiology, seniors, and graduate students.
To my delight, this meeting ended up having the second-highest attendance with approximately 35 students from various departments join in on the fun!
Left- Painting in a Petri dish: In my senior English course at Iowa State University, a project asked me to create an instruction manual on a topic of my choosing. As a scientist at heart, I loved seeing the interdisciplinary joy that came from our annual Agar Art Competition and decided to share the knowledge. This is a peek at the 13-page informative guidebook that describes how a teacher or lab can begin to incorporate painting in a petri dish to seemlessly blend creativity with scientific topics.
Hover over the photo to see the topics covered within.