Student Lets Creativity Flourish in Lab

“Guys! Look! The onion root tips… they’re making sister chromatids!” Thrilled that the way we had pressed cells onto glass slides had recreated DNA replication across an arrangement of cells, I stepped back from the microscope and made room for the other T.A’s to gather around. By chance, the cells had arranged themselves like sister chromatids, part of a phase of DNA replication that could have been happening inside any one of them at that moment. I felt the urge to hum the Inception soundtrack (Cell-ception!) under my breath. “Or… maybe they’re more like a skull and crossbones,” I conceded, reexamining the blood-red blocks.

That is the Middlebury Science program for me. While some people lie on Battell Beach and find unicorns and pirate ships whilst cloud-watching, I, apparently — as a Neuroscience major and resident of Bicentennial Hall (a.k.a. “I’ll take my mail forwarded to the lab at the end of the hall, please, and while you’re at it, please bring sandwiches and reinforcements, and maybe a toothbrush; it’s going to be a long night”) — have opted for interpreting shapes in slightly more academic substances. Between professors who give extra credit for writing songs about the parts and functions of the human brain and the semester in which I colored the human nervous system with scented Mr. Sketch markers (heavy on the cherry) and it counted as homework, I have clearly been conditioned to look for an intersection between the sciences and arts.

I have been lucky to have science as play in my life for a while now. Pre-college years included making DNA helixes out of licorice and rainbow-colored marshmallows (“Adenine’s red, thymine’s green, guanine’s orange and cytosine’s blue… now, match the complementary colors!”), tying together neurons out of beads from internet patterns and writing and illustrating similes for the function of the components in an animal cell (“The cell is like a castle: the nucleus is the king, the cell membrane is the moat, the cytoskeleton is the brick and mortar of castle walls,” and so forth). I am not alone in exploring intersections and overlaps of art and science, and if you hear yourself in these stories, you are not either. Recently, I spent some time browsing through The Scientist Magazine’s website, where I learned about an artistic trend called “Neuroaesthetics.” A movement called “STEM to STEAM,” which advocates for the addition of Art and Design to the “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math” core for innovation in the United States, also appears to be gaining momentum.

Of course, one does not even have to leave campus to find people who express love for science and art equally. I knew I would like Associate in Science instruction Susan DeSimone when, during our first class my freshman year, she appeared in a rainbow tie-dye lab coat and left slightly early to go deliver singing Valentines with her choir group, dressed in all pink. I got to know her over the subsequent semesters as her teaching assistant. As an instructor of the laboratory sections of Cellular Biology and Genetics, Professor DeSimone hopes to take a leave in the coming years to sail with her husband down to the Caribbean bringing microscopes to people who have never had the chance to look through one. She intends to share these microscopic images of nature, with the goal of illuminating the world that cannot be seen with just the naked eye. Indeed, in the classroom setting here at the College, Professor DeSimone makes a point to highlight to incoming students that she views the laboratory as her playground. She wants to methodically cultivate a level of comfort in students that allows for them to experience science in an equally playful way.

Professor DeSimone’s enthusiasm proved to be contagious. One of her former students, Ariele Faber ’13, graduated from Middlebury and went on to combine her fascination with science and passion for art in launching her own company, Cerebella Design. Inspired by the colors, patterns and textures of ordinary things magnified to a scale far larger than we can normally see, Cerebella seeks to promote the accessibility of science to the general population in a visually appealing way. Ariele’s company sells bowties, neckties and scarves with patterns based on microscope images of, for instance, human windpipe cartilage rings and whale skin.

Passerby: “Hey! Nice bowtie!”

Cerebella Consumer: “Thanks! You see these red and pink circles? They’re actually starfish eggs, mega-magnified!”

Passerby: “Oh, wow!” or “Um… eww…”

Cerebella consumer: “That’s right, stand back. I WEAR SCIENCE.”

Made aware of Cerebella and its mission early in my Middlebury career, I carried Areiele’s appreciation of the science aesthetic in the back of my mind into my summer internship. Part of my summer was spent doing neuroscience Alzheimer’s research in the lab of Dr. Sylvain Lesné at the University of Minnesota, and a big part of my work included imaging and analyzing tissue slides. I could not help but interpret the images not just for their scientific value, but also for the potential of bright and visually-appealing textile patterns. Though disappointed with the botched results of the first round of staining and dying neurofibrillary tangles and tau proteins in crepe-paper-thin mouse brain sections, I ended up submitting the image to Ariele’s company. To me, it was powerful that beauty could be found in the intersection of pathology and imperfect science. Who knows, maybe in the next year we will be able to purchase bowties, neckties and scarves with that very pattern — because come on, who wouldn’t want to wear degenerative mouse neurons around his or her neck?

So, dear Middlebury, as we hoist our sails, gather our microscopes and glide into another academic year, it is my hope to remember that being a college student does not necessarily equate to taking oneself, or one’s classroom experience, too seriously. Seek to learn, of course, but don’t let that make you forget to play. Equal pleasure can be derived from cloud-watching outside on the grass and onion-gazing in the fourth floor laboratory. Really, it is just micro- and macroscopic manifestations of the same thing.