Dr. Janet Iwasa’s work illuminates and illustrates data. An award-winning molecular animator, she creates visualizations that support research, learning, and scientific communication.
Iwasa will present the talk “Animating Molecular Machines” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, in room 130 of Schroeder Hall for the R. Omar and Evelyn Rilett Family Life Sciences Lecture Series at Illinois State University.
Sponsored by the School of Biological Sciences, the talk is free and open to the public.
Iwasa, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, will discuss her use of software from the entertainment industry to create visually rich animations that depict specific molecular and cellular processes. She will explore how 3D animation can be particularly beneficial for understanding and describing dynamic and complex molecular machines.
Her award-winning illustrations and animations have appeared in scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and Cell as well as in the New York Times. Iwasa’s work has also been featured on television and in museum exhibits. She was named a 2014 TED fellow and recognized as one of the “100 Leading Global Thinkers” of 2014 by Foreign Policy magazine and one of the “100 Most Creative People” of 2012 by Fast Company magazine.
As a postdoctoral fellow, Iwasa created a multimedia exhibit with Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak at Harvard University and the Museum of Science in Boston. Later, she worked on biological visualizations as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, for her work on the actin cytoskeleton in the laboratory of Dyche Mullins, where she completed 3D animation training at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects later that same summer.
Those with question or who need accommodations to attend this event can email Dr. Lise Comte, lccomte@ilstu.edu.
