News & Updates

New work at Caltech, presented at this year’s NeurIPS conference, proposes a way to grow a self-organizing artificial neural network. The programming is inspired by the developing neural connections in our own brains—growing an entire network from just one neuron. My animation team created this short explainer video to describe the concepts and contributed illustrations to the paper figures.

Read the full paper on arXiv.org and watch our extended abstract video presented at the 2019 NeurIPS Conference.

It’s a great pleasure to have my cover art included in a overview of the “150 years of Scientific Illustration” inside Nature—the editorial is found within the “Books & Art” section of this week’s special 150th anniversary issue. Read the essay here.

An excerpt from the essay by Geoffrey Belknap:

“Imaging today is exquisitely precise and often beautiful, able to capture worlds and structures far beyond the scope of human vision. The ‘Drawn Together’ cover image for the 8 August 2019 issue of Nature is a case in point. Crafted by illustrator Inna-Marie Strazhnik, it provides a visualization of work by bioengineer Tyler Ross and colleagues… Strazhnik translated the models, images and graphs in the paper into a dynamic, almost three-dimensional image.”

Not only is it an honor to be included in this history, but this milestone issue is extraordinarily beautiful to look at, with outstanding information graphics and illustration to bring 150 years into perspective. The data visualization on the cover is also an interactive module on the website where you can explore each scientific discipline that Nature has published and the web of knowledge that connects its authors. See it here.

I’m very honored to be featured on the cover of Nature’s August 8, 2019 issue!

The journal’s cover art describes the academic work by Tyler Ross, Matt Thomson, and their colleagues at Caltech in the paper “Controlling Organization and Forces in Active Matter Through Optically-Defined Boundaries.” Their work demonstrates that light can be used to guide the behavior of an engineered active-matter system—in this case kinesin motors that link together to organize microtubules (protein filaments that make up the cytoskeleton of animal cells) into star-shaped structures called asters. These controlled microtubule asters are also shown to create persistent fluid flows at very small scales and may contribute to new experimental methods in molecular biology and chemistry.

Caltech has featured a fantastic summary of the paper and why it’s so important, and they’ve made this great explainer video that shows the aster movements in action, take a look:

Credit: Caltech and Tyler Ross

Illustration Views:

Illustration detail (click to enlarge)

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of the new website and branding for SPEC, the Single-Cell Profiling and Engineering Center at Caltech.

My talented creative team collaborated with Sisi Chen, Director of SPEC, to construct a new identity system—including the logo—for this innovative genomics lab. We then worked with her to build the content strategy, craft the design, and develop the entire site experience.

http://www.spec.caltech.edu/

What a fun project! Last year, I worked with a fantastic local team to create the website for the city of Glendale’s Arroyo Verdugo Trail Committee.

The webpage banner we designed uses parallax between the layers to enliven the page and inspire participation in the project. My illustrative design is split into 6 over-lapped images that simulate a changing horizon line as you scroll, take a look at how it works at http://www.arroyoverdugogreenway.com/

2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (GNSI), first founded in 1968 by illustrators at the Smithsonian. In celebration, the Guild’s annual juried exhibit is being held at the downtown Washington D.C. headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society.

I’m gratified to have my illustrated work titled “White-Lined Sphinx Moth” included in this prestigious and momentous exhibit. I was able to attend the opening of the exhibit on July 16th and the Guild’s week-long professional conference. As every year, it was absolutely inspiring to be among so many talented and knowledgable scientific artists. The conference’s plenaries, workshops, and classes further developed my insight into the modern challenges of creating demonstrative art.

The 50th Anniversary Guild of Natural Science Special Exhibition is on public view at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Art Gallery, 1200 New York Ave, NW Washington, DC,  July 16-October 15.

I’m extremely proud to have worked on these illustrations describing the various options for post-mastectomy breast reconstruction. Creating patient materials that help bring information, guidance, and agency to those who face this challenge is a rewarding career highlight.

The video series and accompanying reading materials created for Kaiser Permanente are now live!

View the complete video series

View the PDF pamphlet

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Slide through to see stills from the video series; click to enlarge

Check out this TEDx presentation by André Choulika, Ph.D.!

I worked with him and his team at Cellectis to conceptualize comic book inspired graphics that blended seamlessly with the company marketing style. Dr. Choulika’s presentation is fantastic and truly highlights what’s so exciting about the latest CAR-T therapies at Cellectis.

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I’ve recently completed work on a series of videos aimed at patients with geographic atrophy (GA). The challenge of these short videos was to create simple, colorful, and high-contrast graphics to aid viewers already suffering with vision impairment. The videos guide patients and their caregivers on how to modify their home and habits to ease the impact of gradual vision loss.

Take a look at a selection of videos from the series to see more!