Students use art to change how we communicate about research
Though Sneha Chandrashekar, a sophomore neuroscience major at Penn, hadn’t touched a paintbrush since elementary school, but she did so to depict her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research through art.
She painted her research on a ceramic shield, which became a literal and metaphorical symbol of protection and expression.
Sharing her creation with community members at a public showcase at the end of a summer science program she attended gave her an entirely new way to communicate the “why” behind her work. “Putting together the presentation to go along with my shield really made me think differently,” she said. “It wasn’t just the art, I also had to explain why I decided to design it the way I did.”
The discovery of new medical innovations can come with apprehension, skepticism and confusion, mostly because the way researchers talk about their work doesn’t align with how the community is able to understand it.
In short: Science is hard to explain. One Penn program seeks to help by using art.
The Translational Research Immersion Program for undergraduate students, at the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics is trying to bridge that gap by transforming how future scientists communicate about their research and connect with the community.
The Artist-in-Residence initiative, embedded within the program, introduces a simple yet revolutionary idea: what if scientists thought more like artists? Could creativity help decode research for the public, foster community engagement, and improve health outcomes?
A new language for discovery
In the program students immerse themselves in the world of translational research, taking discoveries from the lab—like how something works in your body—and turning them into medicine, tools, or treatments that doctors can use to help people feel better. The Artist-in-Residence program is designed to take that experience a step further, finding ways to use art to make communicating about new scientific discoveries more powerful, engaging, and far-reaching.
Now in its fourth year, the design of the program has the artist-in-residence shadow the students in their labs, workshops, seminars and presentations so the artist can experience what the students are learning and researching. Then both the artist and the students take this experience to produce art as a way to share their research with the community that helps break down some of the barriers to understanding science.
Through this process, the artists aren’t the only ones learning something new. As the students get further along in the program, they begin to see their research not just as results and reports, but as stories waiting to be told. Through collaboration and reflection, they are challenged to translate complex research into visual art that connects the broader community with revolutionary discoveries in medicine.
Assistant professor of Psychiatry Nicholas Balderston, PhD, is Sneha Chandrashekar’s mentor, and also participated and created a shield of his own. For him, it was a grounding exercise and a way to filter out noise and distill his research to its core premise. “It helps you think about your science from the most fundamental perspective,” he said. “How do I boil this down into one piece, one idea, one image?”
The power of artistic expression – stories from the artists-in-residence
Julie Rainbow, the inaugural artist-in-residence in 2022, described her project Invisible Threads as a journey into the unseen connections that bind us and transcend physical and ideological divides. “Art becomes a bridge between past and future,” she reflected, “a way to deepen understanding and push the boundaries of a discipline like science.” Her work underscores how ambiguity and intuition can reveal truths that data alone cannot.
Angela McQuillen, who assumed the artist-in-residency the following year, found herself on a steep learning curve when confronted with the highly technical information. “It was a challenge because a lot of it I did not immediately understand and I had to narrow down the information that I was most interested in taking a deeper dive into,” she said.
Even with this challenge, the experience reinforced her belief in the power of creative collaboration. “In a group of people from many different educational experiences, backgrounds, and age groups, we connected so easily when we focused on our shared creativity and humanity,” she said. Participating in this program and sharing her work through a showcase open to the community, made her realize the power that art and creativity can have when it comes to communicating complex ideas and breaking through societal boundaries.
Marguerita Hagan, the most recent artist-in-residence, worked with the students to have them create a ceramic shield to represent their research and helped them develop presentations to explain their shield and how it embodied their work. “The shield is a thing of protection and demonstrates strength,” she explained. “Using it as a storytelling medium helps break down the silos between science and the public while reinforcing the power of healthy communities.” Simply put, as she said in this recent story on the program in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “It’s taking this intense science and making it visual.”
A model for the future of science communication
The Translational Research Immersion Program, one of a suite of educational programs comprising ITMAT Education, is a competitive internship that brings together students from 12 partner institutions, including Penn.
Over ten weeks, students conduct mentored research with guidance from Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) scientists while participating in research seminars, professional development, social events, and artistic collaborations.
The program, established in 2009 by Emma Meagher, MD, Senior Vice Dean for Clinical and Translational Research and director of ITMAT Education, uses a model that blends scientific training with career development. More recently, Carsten Skarke, MD, the Robert L. McNeil Jr. Fellow in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and an adjunct associate professor of Medicine, has led the program and further infused it with creativity and community.
The Artist-in-Residence program was the brainchild of Skarke. Since its start in 2022, he has seen the impact it has had on the TRIP students.
“By creating space for art and science to coalesce, we’ve been able to support our budding undergraduate scientists to become more confident and versatile in their ability to illustrate their research project to a broad audience,” he said.
“This program goes above and beyond,” Chandrashekar said. “It builds a professional network but also a cohort of individuals going through the same process at the same time. It helps us support each other, even outside the lab.”
To keep up with what the students and artists are working on or to learn how to participate, visit the ITMAT TRIP Artist-in-Residency website.