Students use art to change how we communicate about research
Science is hard to explain. The Artist-in-Residence initiative at Penn’s Translational Research Immersion Program seeks to help by using art.
2 min. read
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.
Students from Translational Research Immersion Program share their final artwork.
(Image: Courtesy of Penn Medicine News)
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?
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, helping to 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.
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