Colloquy Cycle on Monday, July 30, 2018 - 15:00

Biovisualization is a field that combines the complexities of science, the technical rigor of programming, the challenges of effective teaching and the creative possibilities of art and design.  It is often used in one of two ways: 1) to explore and extract meaningful patterns for data analysis and 2) to communicate and engage various audiences.  One of the most powerful yet little-recognized benefits of visualization, however, is the way it synthesizes our knowledge, externalizes our mental models of the science and thereby makes our assumptions explicit.  Despite cognitive research that informs us on how visualizations impact target audiences like students, little attention is given to the thought process behind crafting visualizations and how it impacts those in involved in planning and production.  Many designers and animators report anecdotally that scientists with whom they collaborate gain new insights into their science as a result of navigating this process: "visual thinking" triggered during the planning of a visualization is thought to put familiar data into a new light.  This presentation will draw on a range of example projects for scientists, science museums, public broadcasting, publishers, software developers and students, and provide an overview of tools, techniques, cognitive research and design practices aimed at maximizing the impact of visualizations in both research and education.

Gaël McGill, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO, Digizyme Inc.

Faculty, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Director of Molecular Visualization, Center for Molecular & Cellular Dynamics Harvard Medical School

Co-author & Digital Director, E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth

Dr. Gaël McGill’s federally-funded research and teaching at Harvard Medical School focuses on visualization design and assessment methods in science education and communication. He is also founder & CEO of Digizyme, Inc. (www.digizyme.com) a firm dedicated to the visualization and communication of science, through which he has designed, programmed and art directed over 130 web and visualization projects for biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical device companies, science museums, research institutes and hospitals.  Dr. McGill has also developed curricula and instructional multimedia for students ranging from middle school to graduate students, and recently co-authored and served as digital director of Apple’s flagship digital textbook E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth featured with the release of iBooks Author software. He is the creator of the scientific visualization online community portal Clarafi.com (originally molecularmovies.com), the Molecular Maya (mMaya) software toolkit and has contributed to leading Maya and ZBrush textbooks for Wiley/SYBEX Publishing. Dr. McGill was also a board member of the Vesalius Trust and remains an advisor to several biotechnology and device companies. After his B.A. summa cum laude in Biology, Music, and Art History from Swarthmore College, and Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals fellow, Dr. McGill completed his postdoctoral work at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute studying tumor cell apoptosis and melanoma.