Photograph by Mark Mahaney
Humans are essentially visual animals, capable of gleaning much just by watching the progress of a cell across the microscope stage. But this would not be obvious from the halls of higher education, where visualizations have languished, their power left untapped. There is a constant settling for less, says Robert Lue, the director of life sciences education at Harvard, an assumption that antiquated textbook CDs and static illustration are as good as it gets. It's time education caught up: All generations, he says, expect more from visualizations. In response he has developed a library of wondrous and varied visual tools for teaching science, part of a grand vision concerning the reshaping of science education and ultimately changing the way scientists critique research. < Back | Continue >
The Biovisions Project, as the library and associated programs are called, includes lush 3-D animations, interpretive talks on science, videos of lab methods, and interactive Flash animations developed in collaboration with high school teachers. Lue and collaborator Alain Viel were astounded by the response to visualizations that actually capture what scientists are studying. One project, "The Inner Life of the Cell," was intended only for a Harvard biology course, but when animation studio XVIVO released a short clip, the video went viral. Now Lue is weaving Biovisions into the freshman science curriculum. "It's quite clear that we understand the world primarily through sight," he says. "Somehow we don't use that in teaching science as we really should." < Back | Continue >
In the next few months, Biovisions and XVIVO will release new animations, including visualizations of cell respiration and the electron transport chain in mitochondria — processes so complicated that simplistic explanations fail. Lue is thrilled to be working at a time when science visualizations are coming of age. "It's the gold rush," he says. "The covered wagons are racing out to the coast." He's hoping that the gold he finds won't just be better-taught students, but also a role for visualization in advancing science itself. Soon, he believes, "[scientists will show] their models in ways that will allow not just the public to understand it, but will allow fellow scientists to sit down and say, now that we see it in context, there's an issue that we see we have to address." < Back | Continue >
