Turning the science of memory into a sensory experience

Featuring

  • Robert E. Williams (Multimedia Artist)
  • Jayeeta Basu (*Neuroscientist)

Overview

The science of memory is about who we are. Why do you remember what you remember? Why does your brain make some experiences long term memories and not others? And do our memories change the way we experience the world, right now?

These questions are at the core of Jayeeta Basu’s research. She’s a neuroscientist and the Director of the Basu lab NYU.  It’s a complicated task with multiple overlapping functions, happening on a cellular, circuit and regional level. And Basu’s studies many of them.

When we learn something, we don’t just learn a piece of information by itself. It’s associated with other information. For example when you learn a phrase, you may remember whether you heard it or you read it, the source, the context of when and where you heard it, you might even remember the music that was playing in the background. At a cellular level, all these different regions of the brain that process each of those associations are acting at the same time. How do they work together?

And there’s more happening at the circuit level. We tend to think of neurons as a binary system, they turn on and off. But in reality some neurons act in more of inhibitory role in a circuit while others are more excitatory. Think of it like guests at party. Some guests bring a more intimate energy while others are the life of the party. When there’s a balance between them, you have a party that’s dynamic and it works for everybody. When they’re not balanced, there’s awkwardness and drama. It’s the same in the brain. When these neurons are out of balance, they can cause epilepsy, schizophrenia and depression. But when they cooperate, they help you learn. How do they cooperate?

Even changes in the strength of signal between cells and circuits can impact whether or not the brain stores information. What dictates that? Danger, reward and punishment. All of this affects how you experience and interact with your environment.

“I can’t help but reflect on how these phenomena relate to my conscience experience of the world.”

To study this, Basu’s team works with photon imaging and virtual reality. They look at the anatomy of brain slices and observe circuits and mouse behavior during live sensory experiences.

It’s hard to avoid being philosophical with this material. That’s what appealed to Robert Emerson Williams, an installation artist that works with photos, video, lighting and motorized components. “Though I understand that much of what [Basu] is observing is biochemical and electrochemical in nature, I can’t help but reflect on how these phenomena relate to my conscience experience of the world.” Basu’s “work on the way that past memories inform my current perceptions ignited my interest in this kind of collaboration.”

Williams’ approach was to construct a physical moving metaphor on the relationship of memory and experience. “I decided to work with light, shadow and motion because these elements are, at once, ephemeral and persistent.” His piece is a collection of staged rotating objects that were meaningful to him, whose shadows project onto a viewing surface that interacts with video of other shadows. The objects were like memories interacting with each other projecting a template filtering how we experience the world.

”What I responded to was this idea of experience, registering that, and storing, and registering a similar experience,” and asking, “how do they relate?”

Half of the experience was being able to look behind the projection screen and see how all the parts contribute to the whole.

“What can be known exists as a unitary whole,” but “in order to ‘know’ we must segregate and deconstruct manageable portions.”

Art Specs

Title: Semaphore

Price: $3000

Bios

Robert E. Williams

http://robertemersonwilliams.com

My methods & materials are diverse. My interest in media and pop culture is consistent throughout my work. I believe that the ability to remove images from their original context through photography or other mechanical means has enormous consequences for our ability to know what is true and what is false. I also value hand skills. Coming from a crafts background I have always derived great satisfaction from my relationship with materials. I am currently working on a series of drawings using charcoal and colored chalk on paper called “Dystopia.” They draw from a series of digital photographs that I took during a period when I was working well over forty hours a week. During this period, spare time was at a premium, but the old aphorism about “artists doing work about what they know” came to mind. I knew my commute to work, and I knew my neighborhood of Washington Heights, so I set about documenting my immediate environment as I went through my day.

Jayeeta Basu

http://basulab.us

Jayeeta is a Neuroscientist investigating the molecular, synaptic and cellular events that underlie changes in the flow of information in neural circuits. Her goal is to understand how sensory experiences trigger activity in functionally linked neurons to generate learned behaviors and encode salient features of the environment. The focus or her lab is on describing how the logic of inherent circuit design, diversity of neuron types and spatio-temporal dynamics of synaptic activity amalgamate in the cortico-hippocampal network to organize and store information as memories. She utilizes electrophysiology, imaging and genetic manipulations in brain slices and awake behaving mice to explore links between mnemonic and plastic circuits, associational learning and adaptive behaviors.

How our bodies communicate information

Featuring

  • Richard White (Cancer Biologist)
  • KC Maddux (Artist)

Overview

Bodies communicate information. What that means to a scientist can be very different to an artist.

Richard White is a scientist and director of the White Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He wants to know how cancer spreads from one part of the body to another part of the part of the body and how it thrives once it gets there.

It’s called metastasis and it’s the most advanced stage of cancer, stage 4. When most people die of cancer, they die because it spreads to other parts of the body.  

The key concept here is distance. The situation isn’t only that cancer spreads but that it spread to a new location that’s not continuous with the original location. There’s separation and distance, kind of like a plant whose seed was carried by wind or insect to grow on new soil.

"Some people call this the soil and seed hypothesis", says lab director, Richard White. "Certain seeds are only going to do well in a nurturing environment." In that fashion, "certain cancers like to go to certain parts of the body." For example, "Melanoma, a skin cancer likes to go the brain. We don’t know why but clearly the brain is a receptive soil for those cells." What mediates it, in some cases, is mutations in the tumor. In others, it has to do with the process that turns genes off and on. Or it could be that the environment is changing in a nurturing way, like adding fertilizer to your soil.

White's team works to uncover mechanisms of the soil and seed model with a transparent strain of zebrafish they developed that allows them to see the metastasis and search for connections between the cancers and their surrounding environment.

If our bodies are often read, how do we use them as statements?

Artist KC Maddux is also interested in making connections having to do with body and its surrounding context. Working with drawings, photography, and other materials, Maddux operates in “body talk”.

“Your body is a message,” Maddux says. “Your perceived traits are used to approximate your coordinates within a complex identity matrix that includes gender, age, race, class, and even height, among other things. We use those coordinates as crude cairns that adjust our expectations when interacting with each other."

And when those traits change, so do our expectations. “I have lived 30 years being read as a female and six being read as a male.  I changed my body in 2011, and then strangely, my entire social world changed around me. A physical shift, essentially of hair, muscle and vocal pitch, dramatically affected the way I was received emotionally by people, especially strangers…[but] the substance of my being, of course, had actually changed very little.”

Maddux asks, “if our bodies are often read, how do we use them as statements?” Maddux’s work takes nude images of his body parts out of their traditional context, redrawing his form to convey new meaning.

Though Maddux’s body talk art operates within a social context and White’s lab within an objective one, for both, separation and distance matter and the central question is the same -- why there?

To that effect, White believes, "artists and scientists are opposite sides of the same coin. It’s great we have folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, both amazing advocates of science, but we need more and multiple ways of seeing -- an archive of abstraction. And what may be necessary for this type of collaboration is intimacy, and intimacy only comes with time."

The experience of getting intimate with science was enlightening for Maddux, "in the interest of establishing regularity and reproducibility of uncontaminated results, the entire environment was controlled to a great extent. This is exactly opposite my experience in studio, where I welcome chance and accident. In order to more clearly understand ourselves and our bodies, the scientists must interface with our smallest parts (like cells) in this radically mediated and "unnatural" fashion. The lab becomes some sort of translator, removing all the noise so we can more clearly see what we are looking for."

Maddux hints at the meaning of his two-part work: "There are two different functioning systems overlapping in those rooms [labs].  One is the human pursuit of logic and rational problem solving and the second is the biological, natural processes of life...we experience a biological privilege [and we] dominate the environment...I think that's why power comes up so much, you see that 10 people are running the fish lab and then you have 1,000 fish and they have tumors growing on them. [I'm not going to say] we shouldn't research cancer, [but] my right to live over the right of the fish--it's complicated."

Art Specs

Photographic print on clear film and sheetrock(not canvas as previously stated), 400$

Bios

KC Maddux

http://www.kccrowmaddux.com

https://www.instagram.com/kccrowmaddux/
As a transgendered artist, I question how gender straddles artifice and the authentic, the social and the personal. How does the body’s surface, and the trans body’s in particular, project and receive identity? Using transparent photographs, installation, and drawing, I diagram symbolic constellations relating to gender, power, death, and sexuality, directly on the gallery walls.

Richard White

https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/labs/richard-white

Richard is a Cancer biologist investigating the evolution of cancer metastases in zebrafish. Metastasis, the cause of nearly all deaths form solid tumors, is inevitably a collaboration between genetic & epigenetic alterations present in the tumor cells along with the neighboring microenvironment that supports metastatic outgrowth.  The zebrafish is uniquely suited to perform high-throughput, high-content screens for factors in either compartment that modulate metastatic frequency.  The information from these screens provides basic insights into the process, and can also act as a platform for novel therapeutic discovery to prevent or ameliorate metastatic progression. He is currently studying metastatic mechanisms in melanoma, and have begun work to develop models of pancreatic cancer in the zebrafish.

Using performance to embody science and teach about Tuberculosis

Featuring

  • Heran Darwin (Microbiologist)
  • Kate Lee (Performance Artist)

Overview

In a time when medical schools obsess over making millions of dollars to develop a patent to make a drug, Heran Darwin, biologist and Director of the Darwin Lab at NYU, wants to understand how tuberculosis works.

At 2.5 million deaths a year, tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease on earth. That's almost the size of Chicago (2.7 million). About a third of the world population is infected -- that's at least 2 billion people!

In translational medicine, "you're working to a find a cure for a disease, you're trying to stop it, you're not trying to understand it," says Darwin. But "when you understand how something works you have a better chance at fighting disease and eradicating it from the rest of the earth. I call myself a fundamental scientist because I'm trying to understand the processes. I’m on the ‘how’ side of science. I'm not a pharmaceutical company." Besides, according Darwin, a drug for tuberculosis will never make any money because the majority of people infected with tuberculosis wouldn’t be able to pay for treatment so it isn’t a high priority for many pharmaceutical companies.

The Darwin Lab studies the mechanics and pathways of tuberculosis so that scientists can one day target them with new drugs to cure the disease. That means studying the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (mycobacterium tuberculosis), what it needs to live, and why and how a collection of natural enzymes, acting as a complex called the proteasome, helps it grow in humans.  

Darwin believes that 10 years from now all these building blocks of knowledge are going to be critical to developing a cure. That’s why, with all the institutional prioritizing of profits, Darwin wants to remind the public how critical doing basic science research is for making discoveries that lead to better human health. But it’s hard to get people to care about something they can’t relate to.

“I'd just love for people to understand science better,” but it’s hard to explain science to nonscientists who don’t understand fundamental processes. When the opportunity arose to work with artist Kate Lee  to convey basic science to the public, Darwin jumped on board.

"Sometimes it’s hard to explain science and sometimes it’s hard to explain art" but "maybe there's a way of using art to explain science better."There are countless ways to go about it but if you’re a performance artist, how do you do that? It also brings up questions in terms of what is important to convey to the public, to resonate.  Is it important that the general public understands the minutia of scientific details or is it more important that they understand the big swaths - why a scientists is asking a particular questions or working on a problem in a particular way and how evidence based scientific information is generated and why that process is important and meaningful, rather than very specific details about one particular protein that a lab may work on for example.  

“It’s been a process of translation and understanding.”

Kate Lee, a cultural producer and educator that uses performance art as a tool for social engagement and cultural development, believes that science can be embodied in a performative way and that performance can be used in science education. "I’ve never just been in the arts," Lee says, "I’ve always had a social practice; it’s definitely about getting out of silos."

Lee's vision was to convey Darwins’ work by telling two stories. The first is a human story about the devastation of tuberculosis in developing countries and the second on the science. The ground level reality of the disease is one of drug resistant strains; doctors prescribing outdated drugs because they don't have access to newer treatments, and pharmaceutical companies that have largely ignored the problem.

But for the science, Lee needed Darwin’s help. "I listened to Heran talk about her work and realized I not only wanted to understand the science, but wanted the challenge of how to tell the science story. Usually with performance you go with what resonates, but this is different because it’s a whole new area of knowledge for me, so it took time to sift through the information, read one of Heran's research papers and listen to our recordings just to become familiar with the terminology—I actually really enjoyed that process. It’s been a process of translation and understanding.“

Heran gave Lee lots feedback on the script and did her best to frame the science, including help on that enabling enzyme that helps tuberculosis grow in humans.

“Think of the proteasome as a manager of a cell. It somehow manages all these different proteins. Proteins are the workers - each performs a specialized job important to cell function and therefore all activities we as humans perform and need to live. The proteosome decides when some proteins are going to be degraded and destroyed and it also has to make decisions NOT to destroy certain proteins. This decisions making process is an active regulation of protein activity.  How does this nano-machine make these sorts of fate based decisions? We’re only at the tip of the iceberg. Existentially the question is: how do proteins know how to do things…how do we know how to do things?”

Kate performed "TB: Not a disease of the past" to a packed room at Littlefield in Brooklyn with her performance team at the Art of Science gallery night in December 2016.

Bios

Heran Darwin

http://www.med.nyu.edu/microbiology-parasitology/faculty/heran-darwin-lab-microbiology

Heran is a Microbiologist investigating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and microbial pathogenesis. Tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death in the world, killing about 2 million people a year. Nearly one-third of the world is infected with Mtb, which is a rod shaped bacterium that persists in the lungs of humans. New drugs to treat tuberculosis are urgently needed. Her lab is working to identify activities in Mtb that can be targeted, focusing on understanding the link between Mtb pathogenesis and virulence that are dependent on protein degradation via the proteasome as well as mechanisms of mycobacterial resistance to host. The task of studying Mtb and finding new drugs and drug targets is hindered by the fact that Mtb is dangerous due to its highly infectious nature and is slow growing, requiring 2-3 weeks to grow colonies on solid media. Taken together, Mtb is one of the most significant and challenging organisms to study.

Kate Lee

http://kateleespot.tumblr.com

Kate is an applied theater practitioner and interdisciplinary performance creator, I work in various forms including text based plays, dance, theater, music, and devised performance. I work with diverse communities using theater as a tool for social engagement, education and cultural development. I began performing in Sydney in 2002 and in 2009 I formed ExperimentONE with my directorial debut, Flicking the Flint, which premiered at Brisbane Festival’s UNDER THE RADAR and continued a season at Adelaide Fringe Festival & Metro Arts, Brisbane.

Geometry as an entry point into science

Featuring

  • Mande Holford (Biochemist)
  • Jackie Lima (Painter / Sculptor

Overview

"We're looking for new therapies for treating pain and cancer," says Mande Holford, Director of the Holford Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Other labs have similar goals but what's unique about the Holford Lab is where they're looking - in venomous marine snails.

Venomous snails, also known as cone snails, are carnivorous. They eat worms, small fish, molluscs and other cone snails. They release their venom through a harpoon like tooth. Depending on the species, getting stung by a venomous snail is equivalent to a bee sting and can even be fatal.

But what makes snail venom extra special is that it has compounds that allow scientists to study how cancer cells spread and they can also use the venom to learn how pain signals are suppressed.

Before they can do that, scientists have to first go out in the field and collect the snails and then dissect out the venom glad. They then extract the compounds that are inside the gland for identification. Once they've identified the compounds, they run a series of experiments to figure out what each of the compounds do. When they find one that looks promising for cancer research, they look at what it's interacting with, what it's shape is (because shape impacts function) and try to understand its mechanisms. The lab is currently studying a peptide they found that seems to be very good at preventing liver cells from proliferating.

Holford sees the beauty of it all. "These snails we work with, their shells are spectacular and have been collected for centuries because they’re beautiful." That's why shells are often used as an "access point to talking about the science," with the public.

"We can tell the beautiful story of how snails not only evolved and how the shells are gorgeous, and now they’re also giving us these potential therapies for human ailments. It’s a nice arc, how humans and nature are co-existing and we need each other to survive — especially now when there’s species extinction and loss of biodiversity."

In a similar way, Jackie Lima, a painter and sculptor, connected with her experience at the Holford Lab. From the beginning, Lima was fascinated with the lab's process, the visual representations of their data, the concept drawings that researchers use to clarify their process and communicate ideas and the DNA strips they use to study the venom compounds. There was a beauty to it.

After being shown the shape of one of the peptides isolated from the venom, Lima said, "I simply could not get this peptide ribbon out of my head."

It's shape resonated so much with her that it became the focus of her work. She created an aluminum sculpture that she modeled off that peptide and then painted it with depictions of the lab's activities, as it winds through its processes and concepts.  "My work has always addressed science -- certainly geometry and perspective," Lima said

In a way, the painted sculpture parallels Holford's snail shells - an artful winding structure that acts as an access point to to talk about science.

 

Bios

Jackie Lima

http://colophon.com/seaportdistrict/fedhall/lima.html

http://www.emerzingstars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/4-JACKIE-LIMA-8000-MILES-2014-1024×611.jpg
Jackie is a renowned artist, art educator, curator and lecturer. Her paintings and drawings were accessible throughout the 80’s at the Blue Mountain Gallery, NYC. Her work has been reviewed for the New Criterion by Jed Perl and published in his subsequent book Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World. She often paints on spherical and other 3-Dimensional forms. Her work is involved with “experimental perspective” – looking at the world in different ways to experience the phenomenon of BEING in existence. That experience creates the forms she works with. She paints on strips, rings and spheres to learn more about the nature of being in and moving through 3-Dimensional space. She teaches classes at Fairleigh Dickinson University – the “Global Art World” and “Global Issues” – was also Director of the University College Art Gallery on the Metropolitan Campus for 15 years

Mande Holford

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/chemistry/faculty/Holford/Mande

Mande is a Biochemist interested in the discovery and characterization of bioactive peptides from marine organisms. Her lab applies inventive tools from chemistry and biology to: (1) discover disulfide-rich peptides from venomous sources, (2) develop high-throughput methods for characterizing structure-function peptide interactions, and (3) deliver novel peptide targets to their site of action for therapeutic application. Her lab uses a ‘learn from nature strategy’ to discover novel peptides from venomous marine snails that could be used to manipulate cellular physiology pertaining to pain and cancer. Our research program is interdisciplinary and collaborative, focused on peptide biology and evolution, with impacts ranging from evolution and molecular systematics to nanotechnology, biomedicine and drug discovery.

Visualizing the research process

Featuring

  • John Petrini (Molecular Biologist)
  • Tanya Chaly (Visual Artist)

Overview

Work in the Petrini lab is focused on understanding the specific protein complexes that regulate chromosomal repair; these are often associated with cancer predisposition. A major goal is to understand what role these complexes and the process of DNA repair play in the onset and progression of cancer.

As Petrini describes it, “if you just think about one cell it’s a really interesting problem in three dimensions for a cell to understand where the break is. The fact that they’re signaling teleologically [with purpose] implies that there is a mechanism by which the cell knows when it’s broken. So there’s a 3-dimensional problem which signaling has to address and essentially there’s a 4th dimension of time because you’ve got to deal with the problem in a timely fashion.”

Chaly was impressed and fascinated by the many components of the research. "I took this as my starting point and decided to produce an installation that comprises several differing units, referring to a variety of elements of the research process and its applications – both visual and conceptual."

The title of this piece "Exquisite Dependence" was inspired by the following quote: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology” -Carl Sagan

"I incorporated the whiteboard notes, data and diagrams from the labs research papers. I chose a deep vibrant blue ground for some of the drawings as a reference to the incredible colors I saw under high-powered microscopes of the stages of cell division. The molecules are either drawn floating loosely on a ground suspended in space, or punctured through from behind appearing as a more sculptural motif. This suggests the idea of searching for something not yet seen or fully realized. The mice are presented contained, isolated individuals, specimens framed under convex glass. They are placed underneath the drawings as a support or foundation of the installation, the symbolic basis from which the research originates. The colored labels are from the lab’s mouse colony, dissection pins ax them to the wall, a color-coded marker but also placement as tombstone, honoring and acknowledging the contribution these animals make. Lastly, a small drawing at the base of the installation, the backbone on which all the research rests, the symbol from Greek mythology of healing, medicine & health, the Staff of Asclepius."

Bios

John Petrini

https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/labs/john-petrini 

John is a Molecular biologist investigating the repair of chromosomal breaks and the activation of the DNA-damage-induced cell-cycle proliferation checkpoints. Work in his laboratory is focused on understanding the molecular transactions that govern chromosome stability, replication, and repair. He is interested in these processes because cancer predisposition and other pathologies are often associated with mutations that affect chromosomal metabolism. In this regard, his lab focuses on a conserved multi-protein complex that includes Mre11, Rad50, and Nbs1 in mammals or Xrs2 in the budding yeast S. cerevisiae.In the long term, he hopes to understand what role this complex in particular and the process of DNA repair in general play in the onset and progression of malignancy.

Tanya Chaly

http://tanyachaly.com

I am a visual artist working across a variety of mediums using painting, drawing and printmaking. In my practice I examine ideas of the Natural World; the history of Natural Science, notions of nature and classifications of Wilderness and the fetishization of Nature. I have currently been looking at Ecosystems, both the macro and micro relationships within these systems. She creates layered and involved worlds drawing on a wide range of influences from Gothic, Primitivism, Eastern Philosophy, Psychology, and the Natural Sciences.

The action potential of a neuron as a music composition on tension and release

Featuring

  • Jayeeta Basu (Neuroscientist)
  • Kevin Serra (Musician)

Overview

Serra "loosely sketched all the pieces and movements to showcase a variety of sounds developed from the same note and brought these loose ideas into Mozart Street studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to improvise with jazz drummer Liev Golowasch from Hunter College. I used improvisation and juxtaposed areas of tension and release. The song includes audio samples of prior experiments from the lab."

The resulting piece, "Action Potential", is dedicated to the memory of PUai-32.

Bios

Jayeeta Basu

http://basulab.us

Jayeeta is a Neuroscientist investigating the molecular, synaptic and cellular events that underlie changes in the flow of information in neural circuits. Her goal is to understand how sensory experiences trigger activity in functionally linked neurons to generate learned behaviors and encode salient features of the environment. The focus or her lab is on describing how the logic of inherent circuit design, diversity of neuron types and spatio-temporal dynamics of synaptic activity amalgamate in the cortico-hippocampal network to organize and store information as memories. She utilizes electrophysiology, imaging and genetic manipulations in brain slices and awake behaving mice to explore links between mnemonic and plastic circuits, associational learning and adaptive behaviors.

Kevin Serra

https://soundcloud.com/cloudseeding/kaleidocycle-ii

https://soundcloud.com/cloudseeding/the-light-feat-nadine-carina-1

Guitarist and member of the band, This Ascension, Lot 49. This Ascension is a gothic ethereal band from Southern California, which formed in 1988 and released four albums. This Ascension toured the United States three times and the west coast prolifically, sharing the stage with bands including The Jesus and Mary Chain, Chris Issak, The Wolfgang Press and the Pixies. Kevin records music for a singles project with guest vocalists under the name, Cloud Seeding, conceived as a space for collaboration to showcase vocalists he admires. There is no one-signature sound, no fixed or preconceived notions, just a space for improvisation that is free to change.

Choreographing the ups and downs of living with Lupus

Featuring

  • Tislarm Bouie (Choreography / Dance)
  • Alessandra Pernis (Hospital for Special Surgery; Autoimmunity & Inflammation Program)

Overview

The Pernis Lab is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms employed by lymphocytes to accurately respond to the signals that guide them along specific pathways and activities. Lymphocytes, including B & T cells, are cells of the immune system that play a critically active role in fighting off disease and infections. The Pernis lab is particularly interested in understanding how when things go wrong in the immune system, it can lead to autoimmunity (the immune system starts attacking ‘self’) such as in Lupus (SLE) and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Their goal is to gain a mechanistic understanding of the signaling pathways that control both physiologic (normal) and pathologic (disease inducing) immune (T cell) responses and further delineate the molecular networks responsible for lymphocyte dysfunction in autoimmune diseases, a detailed understanding of which will enable us to gain a better understanding of the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases like SLE and RA and provide important information for the development of novel therapeutic regimens for the treatment of SLE and RA

Solstice is a work about a young woman living with Lupus. It shows the effect the disease can have on ones daily life, fighting against all odds and to keep going when you feel like the world is caving in on you. You must live life to its fullest potential!

Bios

Tislarm Bouie

Tislarm Bouie was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated The Professional Performing Arts School/ of New York City, as a dance major in partnership with The Ailey School. He received his B.F.A in dance from The University of the Arts. Tislarm has also studied at The Mark Morris Dance School, Joffrey Ballet School and Philadelphia School of the Arts. He has attended summer intensives at Britney Spears Camp for the Performing Arts, Ballet Hispanico, Broadway Dance Center and Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts all on scholarship. He was a member of Philadanco’s 2nd Company, Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence Dance Company (US Tour), performed with Chinese recording artist Jo (Chinese Tour), is currently on faculty at Steps on Broadway. He was recently featured in a Macys and World Cup 2014 commercial. He is a client of MSA Talent Agency. Tislarm’s choreography was featured at The Young Choreographers and the Dumbo Dance Festival and on the Cocoa Cola Tour with Def Jam recording artist Karina Pasian. He is excited to see what “The love of his life” dance has to offer.

Alessandra Pernis

Hospital for Special Surgery; Autoimmunity & Inflammation Program

The Pernis Lab is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms employed by lymphocytes to accurately respond to the signals that guide them along specific pathways. Lymphocytes are cells of the immune system that respond to infections and disease. Initial work in the Pernis lab focused on Interferon Regulatory Factor 4 (IRF4), which functions as a transcription factor and is highly expressed (present) in cells of the immune system. A transcription factor is a protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, thereby controlling the flow (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to ultimately produce a native protein (via an intermediary called messenger RNA). Transcription factors can perform their function alone or with other proteins in a complex, by promoting (as an activator), or blocking (as a repressor) the flow of genetic information. Activating or repressing the flow of genetic information in a cell can have profound but various effects on cellular growth, activity, and function.

Absence of the transcription factor IRF4 leads to profound defects in the function and homeostasis (balance) of particular lymphocyte subsets of the immune system called, T and B lymphocyte cells. Early studies in the Pernis lab demonstrated that IRF4 is up-regulated in response to lymphocyte cell activation and that it controls crucial cell processes like cytokine (chemical mediators responsible for ‘communication’ between immune cells) production and apoptosis (programmed cell death); directly supporting the idea that IRF4 plays a central role in lymphocyte biology.

Recent studies from the Pernis lab, have demonstrated that IRF4 is a critical regulator of T lymphocyte cell differentiation (development) down a particular cell fate pathway called TH-17 and that IRF4 is absolutely required for the production of IL-17 and IL-21. IL-17 & IL-21 are two cytokines that have recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple autoimmune disorders including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE; lupus) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In order to gain a more detailed mechanistic understanding of the signaling pathways that control both physiologic and pathologic T cell responses, the Pernis lab is also presently studying the broader IRF4 regulatory network, which includes the protein Def6. The long-term goals of the laboratory are to employ both murine models and translational (clinical) approaches to further delineate the molecular networks responsible for lymphocyte dysfunction in autoimmune diseases. A detailed understanding of these mechanisms will enable us to gain a better understanding of the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases like SLE and RA and provide important information for the development of novel therapeutic regimens for the treatment of SLE and RA.

 

Composing jazz for cancer detection research

Featuring

  • Daniel Heller (Nanotechnology, Biomedical Engineer) 
  • Nick Dunston (Music / Jazz / Bass)

Overview

Combining materials science, nanotechnology, and biomedical engineering, the Heller lab works on tiny solutions to big problems. The focus of the lab is the development of new types of nanoscale (extremely small!) materials that are designed specifically to solve clinical problems. For example, the lab is developing carbon nanotube-based sensors to detect early-stage cancers, as well as nanoparticles to target drugs to metastatic tumors. Working at the intersection of researchers who are striving to understand the causes of cancer and with physicians who understand the clinical realities of the disease, the Heller lab stands to develop therapies that improve patient survival and quality of life.

“Subtle Treatment” is Dunston's first commissioned composition. Dunston describes his work as being "modeled with the mindset of the score to a short film. The short film being what I envisioned when examining Dr. Daniel Heller’s work."

Bios

Nick Dunston

Music / Jazz / Bass

Nick Dunston was born in Washington D.C. and raised in New York City, Nick’s musical training started formally on the cello at age 5, then the trombone at age 13. He started playing the electric bass in middle school, playing in various school ensembles and in bands with classmates. This eventually led to taking classical bass lessons at the Juilliard MAP program, and playing in school and community jazz ensembles. Nick has received outstanding soloist awards from the Charles Mingus High School Jazz competition, as well as the Essentially Ellington Regional Jazz competition. He is also a recipient of the LaGuardia Arts High School Composer’s award. Nick has performed with musicians such as Bruce Barth, Don Sickler, Mark Sherman, Terrell Stafford, and Scott Robinson. He currently studies privately with Linda Oh, and will be attending The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in the fall of 2014. As a bassist, Nick is extremely versatile. While he is rooted in jazz and contemporary music, he has a strong foundation and interest in other types of music, such as pop, folk, alternative rock, funk, and hip hop. He strongly believes that whether it comes to playing or composing, all musicians should strive for honesty, thoughtfulness, individuality, and innovation.

Daniel Heller

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Molecular Pharmacology & Chemistry Program

Daniel Heller’s research focus is rooted in Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology can be defined as manipulation of matter and/or molecules with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers – so, extremely (!) tiny. Nanotechnology as defined by size is naturally very broad and as such nanotechnology has the potential for a variety applications for research, industrial, and military use. Advances in nanotechnology may be able to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as in medicine, electronics, biomaterials and energy production. Nanotechnology offers some of its greatest potential contributions in the precise control of molecular binding events and the transduction of binding phenomena – for example, such as that occurs when two cells in your body are communicating with each other – often through a chemical mediator that physically binds to the surface of the cell, also referred to as signaling.

The Heller lab is committed to employing the potential of nanotechnology for two crucial pursuits: the early detection of cancer, and the innovative treatment of metastatic disease. With a background in materials science, nanotechnology, and biomedical engineering, Daniel and his lab develop different nanomaterials that are able to target metastatic cancer in order to deliver crucial therapies. By collaborating with researchers who are striving to understand the causes of cancer, and with physicians who understand the clinical realities of the disease, we have a great chance to solve real clinical problems and develop therapies that improve patient survival and quality of life.

The Heller lab is also developing nanoscale sensors to detect cancer at its earliest stages. Using novel nanomaterials with unique optical (visual) properties, the lab is improving the ability to detect cancer biomarkers in the body, permitting detection before symptoms arise. In addition, these nanotechnologies allow cancer biologists to measure important biological molecules within live cells, allowing them to ask unprecedented questions and offering new tools to potentially accelerate biomedical research in many areas.
 

Painting life in the lab

Featuring

  • Ross Cagan (Mount Sinai Hospital Developmental & Regenerative Biology Program)
  • Jennifer Toth (Paint & Collage)

Overview

The Cagan Lab uses the fruit fly (scientific name = Drosophila) to model human disease mechanisms and therapeutics, primarily for cancer and also diabetes. Research in the Cagan lab incorporates genetic and drug screening approaches in fruit flies, and uses fruit fly characteristics and/or fruit fly survival as a readout for potential drug targets. By combining Drosophila genetics and medicinal chemistry to develop a new generation of lead compounds that emphasize “balanced polypharmacology” (drug compounds active against multiple disease targets), the Cagan lab has identified novel mechanisms that direct transformed cells into the first steps towards metastasis. Work from the Cagan lab has also helped validate the drug vandetanib as a therapeutic for Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma. Combining these basic research approaches, Dr. Cagan has established the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics, in which new tools including ‘personalized Drosophila avatars’ are developed and used to screen for personalized human drug cocktails.

The Cagan lab uses the fruitfly as an animal in which to replicate DNA sequences of particular cancerous tumors from patients and find drug cocktails that will best target those tumors.  I was fascinated by the idea of eyes as a theme connecting the scientists, their flies, and ultimately my artwork.  The scientists are looking for new solutions, the eyes of the fruit flies are being morphed and distorted by tumors and reversed by drugs, and my vision is yet another layer of looking.  Time in the Cagan lab was spent drawing directly from the artist’s observations of the equipment and people at work. Toth's artwork includes drawings, a small felt tapestry, collages, & a final painting.

The final pieces include images of eyes, of microscopes, of scientists working, and of distortions as if these various forms of seeing are being affected by changing visions.  The final result, incorporates different painting techniques and different materials than the artist would normally use, as an effort to stretch the artistic vision and try new solutions in the spirit of the kind of imaginative investigating happening in the Cagan lab. “I learned so much from my time in the Cagan lab, and saw scientists discovering new solutions with such passion, intelligence, & innovation.”

Bios

Jennifer Toth

Paint & Collage

Jenny Toth is a painter and collage artist living and working in New York City. She received her B.A. from Smith College in Studio Art in 1994, and her M.F.A. from Yale School of Art in 1998. She also spent two years studying at The New York Studio School. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Wagner College on Staten Island. Jenny is represented by The George Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA, and Tabla Rasa Gallery in Brooklyn. She was recently a member of SOHO20 Gallery and is currently a member of Blue Mountain Gallery in NYC. In recent years she has spent much of her time living and working in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where she finds inspiration. Jenny’s work is based in direct observation from life. She explores ways of isolating fragments, dismantling them, and recombining them in disjointed ways.

Ross Cagan

Mount Sinai Hospital
Developmental & Regenerative Biology Program

Cancer has proven a difficult disease to achieve significant long-term advances in patient survival; improvements in survival are often measured in months. Diabetes has not fare much better. Dr. Cagan’s laboratory uses Drosophila (fruit fly) as an experimental model to address disease mechanisms and therapeutics, primarily for cancer and diabetes. Taking advantage of the fly, the Cagan lab uses a whole animal and integrated approach in studying disease: genes and drugs identified in flies are then brought to rodent (such as mouse models) and ultimately to clinical trials in humans; sequencing and histological data from humans are then brought back to our fly models to allow us to develop increasingly sophisticated dipteran (insect) tools.

More specifically, in cancer, their work helped validate the drug, vandetanib, as a therapeutic for Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma; combined Drosophila genetics and medicinal chemistry to develop a new generation of lead compounds that emphasize “balanced polypharmacology”; and identified novel mechanisms that direct transformed (cancerous) cells into the first steps towards metastasis. Regarding diabetes, his laboratory has identified mechanisms that direct diabetic cardiomyopathy and nephropathy as well as a new network through which diabetic patients are at heightened risk for aggressive tumors.

Dr. Cagan along with colleagues at Mt. Sinai has established the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics, which by combining the basic research approaches discussed above aims to create new tools including ‘personalized Drosophila avatars’ that are being developed and used to screen for personalized drug cocktails.

Another fundamental interest of the Cagan laboratory is the basic understanding of epithelial patterning and how does an initially random collection of undifferentiated (naïve, undeveloped) cells mature into a precise and functional organized epithelium? The developing Drosophila eye is an elegant model for studying epithelial patterning and, incidentally, is one of nature’s most beautiful structures. Once the early pattern of photoreceptors are laid down, a progressive stepwise program of recruitment gathers the other 13 cells required to create the core of each unit eye or ‘ommatidium’. Remaining is a ‘sea’ of undifferentiated (naïve, undeveloped) interommatidial precursor cells (IPCs). These IPCs will differentiate (develop) as 2 cells that form an interweaving hexagonal lattice around the ommatidia, and the rest are killed off to tighten the pattern. In order to more clearly understand how such eye patterning is controlled, we have closely examined the role of transmembrane adhesion molecules expressed in IPCs. Adhesion molecules are proteins located on the cell surface involved in binding with other cells or with the extracellular matrix (ECM) between cells. We find that, one adhesion molecule in particular, called Rst, it directs hexagonal pattern in the eye by binding to the transmembrane protein, Hibris (Hbs), on the surface of cells within the neighboring ommatidial cores. These results suggest a model in which the drive to maximize Rst/Hbs binding drives cells into their proper niche and/or pattern. The Cagan lab is currently testing whether simple adhesion is sufficient to direct cells into a hexagonal, honeycomb pattern through experiments and through computer modeling. Implicit in this model is the idea that adhesion, not signal transduction, is paramount.

Using colors as filters to learn about a cell

Featuring

  • Ana Banito (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Biology & Genetics Program)
  • Rachael Wren (Paint)

Overview

Dr. Banito is interested in the molecular switches that play a role at the intersection of cancer, aging, and cellular senescence. Senescence is a cell cycle arrest program that limits proliferation of damaged cells and is triggered in response to diverse signals such as cell stress often observed in premalignant (pre-cancerous)-lesions and in aged tissues. Senescence is important in restricting tumorigenesis (tumor growth) & in chemotherapy responses. Exosomes (small sacs carrying chemical derived signals) function to mediate inter-cellular communication & have been show to be important in the senescence response, but it is unclear their precise role in cancer, aging, & senescence. Banito’s work aims to explore the role of exosomes and how secreted factors may influence tissue environment & potentially contribute to cancer and aging. Characterizing exosomes secreted by senescent cells will help identify molecules that could mediate senescence-secreted exosome biological activity, understand how this is regulated, and could ultimately lead to improved diagnostic signatures for cancer and other diseases as well as tools to study or treat disease.

This body of work grew out of the time Wren spent in Dr. Ana Banito’s lab looking at cancer cells through a microscope. "I was especially interested in the way that scientists use a different color stain or filter to look at different components of the same cell. The idea that color can reveal distinct aspects of a single item inspired this grouping of nine paintings."

Wren used three different underlying structures and approached each one in three different ways depending on its color – red, green, and blue, the colors she observed in the slides in the lab.  Wren built up the paintings by layering many small brush marks, which echo the fundamental particles that compose all living matter.

Bios

Rachael Wren

Paint

Rachael Wren received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Washington. Her work has been exhibited at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, The Painting Center, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University, among many others. Rachael is the recipient of the Julius Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy Museum and an Aljira Fellowship. She has been awarded residencies at Chashama North, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Anderson Center, and the Artist House at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Rachael’s work uses geometry to structure ephemeral atmospheric and natural phenomena. To reproduce the sensation of dense, particulate space, she works with an accumulation of small, repeated brush marks of subtly shifting color.

Ana Banito

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Biology & Genetics Program

Dr. Banito is interested in the interplay between senescence, cancer, and aging. Cellular senescence is a cell cycle arrest program that limits proliferation of damaged cells and can be triggered in response to diverse forms of cellular stress such as oncogene activation, has been observed in premalignant (pre-cancerous)-lesions and in aged tissues, and was shown to restrict tumorigenesis (tumor growth), modulate chemotherapy responses, and exert a primordial role in wound-healing mechanisms and tissue repair. Besides changes in cell cycle regulators, senescent cells express genes that influence the surrounding tissue microenvironment, and secrete a variety of immune modulators and inflammatory cytokines (chemical mediators of immune cell activity and inflammation), collectively referred to as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Tumor and stromal derived SASPs contribute to a unique form of immune surveillance, leading to the clearance of senescent cells in vivo, and restricting tumor growth and development in some cancers such as in liver tumorigenesis. Therefore senescence has important cell-autonomous (internal or intrinsic from/to the cell) and non cell-autonomous (external from/to the cell) functions. However, SASP components can be either directly secreted as soluble proteins (classical secretion) or transported in specialized vesicles (small liquid/chemical carrying sacs) called exosomes, which function to mediate inter-cellular communication in a short or long distance fashion. Little, however, is known about exosome secretion during senescence responses and its biological consequences in vivo are also unknown.

Bonito’s work, in the Lowe lab, is rooted in the hypothesis that exosome secretion from senescent cells, in early premalignant lesions, or during chemotherapy responses may also have tumor suppressive functions. Her work aims to explore the roles of exosome secretion from senescent cells with an increased emphasis on how this process influences the tissue microenvironment – a transition that necessitates an increased emphasis on in vivo senescence animal models. Additionally, a fundamental interest of Bonita’s work is to quantify and characterize exosomes secreted by senescent cells in order to distinguish a signature with potential diagnostic value and to identify molecules that could mediate senescence-secreted exosome biological activity, understand how this is regulated and, ultimately to create tools to inhibit activity.
 

To study molecules that slow the spread of cancer, scientists repeat, repeat, repeat

Featuring

  • Johanna Joyce (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Cancer Biology & Genetics Program)
  • Sara Morawetz (Multi-Disciplinary Art)

Overview

The Joyce Lab is interested in the critical influence of certain types of non-cancerous cells that exist in tissues in close proximity to cancerous cells on tumor progression and response to cancer therapy. They have found that both non-cancerous stromal cells and immune cells in the tumor tissue environment contribute significantly to both tumor growth and the ability of certain tumor types to travel & grow in other locations throughout the body, a process called metastasis. The Joyce lab studies a specific molecule called Cathepsin S, that is an enzyme peptidase which degrades other proteins. They have found that Cathepsin S is a modulator of site-specific metastasis, regulating breast-to-brain metastasis. Immune cells (macrophages) & tumor cells produce Cathepsin S and only combined depletion in both cells can reduce brain metastasis. Pharmacological (drug based) inhibition of Cathepsin S significantly reduced brain metastasis demonstrating its potential as a drug target for brain cancer and possibly other types of cancer. This type of work has the potential to revolutionize the way cancer is treated because instead of just attacking the tumor itself one can begin to devise ways to also attack key players in the tumor environment that provide critical signals to cancer cells.

To an artist the experience of the lab is at once complex yet clear — foreign yet familiar – an endless series of discrete tasks, transparent in isolation, but that collectively conceal a degree of consequence that only a lifetime of study could truly reveal. The lab itself is an organism, a system in play – things are moved and manipulated, tested and tested again. An endless succession of repeats that both compel and mystify. In this impenetrable system of rigor and repetition nature reveals its abstruse beauty – an unintended emergent entity.

"repeat, repeat" created for Art of Science is a response to the artists observations of the act of research undertaken by Dr. Johanna Joyce and her team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. repeat, repeat is an acknowledgement of the singular repeated act required of scientific research so often obscured by the vast complexities of a broader investigation. Completed in chalk to signal the re-education process that is implicit in their research, these works are a tribute to the microenvironment and the impact an individual element / action may have on their compositions.
 

Bios

Sara Morawetz

Multi-Disciplinary Art

Sara Morawetz is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores intersections between art, science, philosophy and methodology. She graduated from Sydney College of the Arts with a BFA in Photomedia (Honours First Class). She has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Dobell Foundation Scholarship, University of Sydney Honours Scholarship, and the Chancellor Committee Scholarship. Sara also attended the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland as part of an international exchange program. In 2005, she was awarded a Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship, which she used to undertake an Artist Residency with Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, China (2006) and an Audience Development and Arts Management Program in New York City in 2008. Sara is currently a PhD candidate at Sydney College of the Arts and is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship.

Johanna Joyce

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Cancer Biology & Genetics Program

Cancers develop in complex tissue environments, which they depend upon for sustained growth, invasion into surrounding tissue ultimately leading to metastasis, which is defined by cancer cells spreading throughout the body. The tumor microenvironment is made of many different types of cells including immune cells, fibroblasts, vascular networks, and extracellular matrix, which collectively can be referred to as stromal cells or stroma. The tissue microenvironment, made up of these many different types of stromal cells, has critical modulatory functions in tumor development and metastasis.

The Joyce lab is interested in the critical influence that these non-cancerous stromal cells can have on tumor progression and response to therapy. The lab investigates both positive (growth promoting) and negative (growth blocking) signals provided by the normal tissue stroma to the cancer cells, and how normal cells can be modified by the cancer cells to produce a variety of factors that enhance tumor malignancy. One of the critical regulatory cell types in the microenvironment are a type of immune cell called a macrophage or tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). And, TAMs have a potent ability to promote tumor progression.

A major current focus of the lab is to understand the mechanisms by which stromal cells regulate the later stages of tumor progression, namely invasion and metastasis. Moreover, emerging evidence indicates that stromal cells are mobilized and activated following anti-cancer therapy, and apparently contribute to a lack of response/ resistance to treatment. The Joyce lab employs a range of complementary approaches to address these questions including mouse models of cancer, 3D co-culture systems, and analysis of patient samples in collaboration with clinical colleagues in order to better understand how the results in the lab corresponds to what is happening in patients. The ultimate goal of Johanna’s lab is to apply this knowledge to the clinic via the development of targeted therapies that disrupt essential tumor-stromal interactions.

Contrasting real-life nanotechnology with the fiction of "Fantastic Voyage"

Proteus-install.jpg

Featuring

  • Daniel Heller (Nanotechnologist, Biomedical Engineer)
  • Shauna Sorensen (Painter)

Overview

Combining materials science, nanotechnology, and biomedical engineering, the Heller lab works on tiny solutions to big problems. The focus of the lab is the development of new types of nanoscale (extremely small!) materials that are designed specifically to solve clinical problems. For example, the lab is developing carbon nanotube-based sensors to detect early-stage cancers, as well as nanoparticles to target drugs to metastatic tumors. Working at the intersection of researchers who are striving to understand the causes of cancer and with physicians who understand the clinical realities of the disease, the Heller lab stands to develop therapies that improve patient survival and quality of life.

Shauna's first reaction to Dr. Daniel Heller’s work with nanotechnology was to equate what he does with pop culture concepts. "One science fiction trope in particular resonated with me because of its pop culture ubiquity, themes of discovery, and, of course, use of miniaturization: The Fantastic Voyage. The Fantastic Voyage is significant in that it makes visible a combat with internal health issues that we are not ordinarily able to see. However, the technology in the film is overly complicated and clumsy, not meant to work in the real world.  Dr. Heller’s work, on the other hand, is an elegant and conceivable version of the fictional weapons used to fix health problems in the film.  Nanotechnology may still seem like science fiction, but it is a much more feasible tool for the detection and treatment of cancer than microscopic laser guns."

"During the Art of Science, I was interested in contrasting the reality of scientific research with the fantasy of exploring the human body at a cellular level, personally destroying each tumor and clot.  The art inspired by Dr. Heller’s work is about exploration and research.  Proteus is meant to be overwhelming, with lots of little details made more complex by the tiny particles of glitter that shift perceptions of shapes and colors, creating a new image each time one moves and investigates."

Bios

Shauna Sorensen

Paint

Shauna Sorensen was born in Syracuse, NY and currently lives in Brooklyn. She is an artist that combines traditional art mediums with nontraditional subject matter and composition. She obtained a BA from Wagner College, where she focused on painting subjects from the natural sciences in constructed or fantastical settings. Her work addresses ideas about history, natural disasters, and violence in a humorous way to question the depiction of history and one’s personal experience with it. She is pursuing an MA degree in modern and contemporary art history at CUNY Hunter College. Her thesis is focused on artist Asger Jorn’s ceramic work. Shauna became involved in Ligo Project through her interest in creating conversation between art and science. She currently works at Open Source Gallery, a Brooklyn arts organization with a focus on socially engaged work and accessibility.

Daniel Heller

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Molecular Pharmacology & Chemistry Program

Daniel Heller’s research focus is rooted in Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology can be defined as manipulation of matter and/or molecules with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers – so, extremely (!) tiny. Nanotechnology as defined by size is naturally very broad and as such nanotechnology has the potential for a variety applications for research, industrial, and military use. Advances in nanotechnology may be able to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as in medicine, electronics, biomaterials and energy production. Nanotechnology offers some of its greatest potential contributions in the precise control of molecular binding events and the transduction of binding phenomena – for example, such as that occurs when two cells in your body are communicating with each other – often through a chemical mediator that physically binds to the surface of the cell, also referred to as signaling.

The Heller lab is committed to employing the potential of nanotechnology for two crucial pursuits: the early detection of cancer, and the innovative treatment of metastatic disease. With a background in materials science, nanotechnology, and biomedical engineering, Daniel and his lab develop different nanomaterials that are able to target metastatic cancer in order to deliver crucial therapies. By collaborating with researchers who are striving to understand the causes of cancer, and with physicians who understand the clinical realities of the disease, we have a great chance to solve real clinical problems and develop therapies that improve patient survival and quality of life.

The Heller lab is also developing nanoscale sensors to detect cancer at its earliest stages. Using novel nanomaterials with unique optical (visual) properties, the lab is improving the ability to detect cancer biomarkers in the body, permitting detection before symptoms arise. In addition, these nanotechnologies allow cancer biologists to measure important biological molecules within live cells, allowing them to ask unprecedented questions and offering new tools to potentially accelerate biomedical research in many areas.



Dance collective, The Pharmacy Project, performs a story about tumor suppressors

Featuring

  • Dr. Scott Lowe (cancer – tumorigenesis & resistance to chemotherapy; MSKCC)
  • Nora Petroliunas (choreography)

Overview

According to Scott Lowe, “my research has shown that p53, a tumor suppressor, plays an important role in “apoptosis” – a form of cell suicide – and in doing so provides a natural brake to tumor development. Cells lacking p53 are more prone to becoming cancerous and more resistant to chemotherapy. Current research in my lab is based on the premise that distinct genetic changes in a patient’s cancer creates molecular dependencies that represent therapeutic opportunities. The lab is also studying genes specifically needed for survival of cancer cells in an effort to identify targets for new cancer therapies. Combining innovative approach to cancer biology research we are working toward identification of new therapeutic strategies to treat some forms of cancer.”

Cancer arises as cells acquire alterations in oncogenes — genes that when mutated may cause a cell to survive and divide indefinitely. But oncogene mutations do not inevitably cause cancer. Normally, cells can “fight back” against oncogene activity through genes called tumor suppressors. Tumor suppressor genes trigger cells to self-destruct or to halt their own growth, preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation and cancer development. The Lowe lab investigates how the disruption of these mechanisms may lead to cancer. They have also found that mutations in tumor suppressors can reduce the effectiveness of some chemotherapy drugs. They hope to shed new light on why some tumors become drug resistant and to discover more effective therapeutic targets

As a performer, Petrolinas “began with the same foundation as the lab, working with movement principles based in oncogenes and tumor-suppressors; these cell mutations are a trouble of cancer, unique to every individual. This idea was taken into the studio to grow.”

Her final work was five bodies working together as a unit, dividing, and then dividing again, sometimes allowed to do so freely and rapidly, other times with an outside force holding them together, ‘stopping’ the division

Bios

Nora Petroliunas

www.thepharmacyproject.tumblr.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pharmacy-Project/212430152104551

SUNY Purchase, BFA dance (’06); Artistic Director, The Pharmacy Project, a Brooklyn based dance collective.

Dr. Scott Lowe

http://mskcc.org/research/lab/scott-lowe

http://www.hhmi.org/scientists/scott-w-lowe

B.S., UW-Madison; Ph.D., MIT; Associate Dir. Basic Cancer Research, MSKCC; Chair, Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center; Investigator, HHMI & Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

“My research has shown that p53, a tumor suppressor, plays an important role in “apoptosis” – a form of cell suicide – and in doing so provides a natural brake to tumor development. Cells lacking p53 are more prone to becoming cancerous and more resistant to chemotherapy. Current research in my lab is based on the premise that distinct genetic changes in a patient’s cancer creates molecular dependencies that represent therapeutic opportunities. The lab is also studying genes specifically needed for survival of cancer cells in an effort to identify targets for new cancer therapies. Combining innovative approach to cancer biology research we are working toward identification of new therapeutic strategies to treat some forms of cancer.”

Cancer arises as cells acquire alterations in oncogenes — genes that when mutated may cause a cell to survive and divide indefinitely. But oncogene mutations do not inevitably cause cancer. Normally, cells can “fight back” against oncogene activity through genes called tumor suppressors. Tumor suppressor genes trigger cells to self-destruct or to halt their own growth, preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation and cancer development. The Lowe lab investigates how the disruption of these mechanisms may lead to cancer. They have also found that mutations in tumor suppressors can reduce the effectiveness of some chemotherapy drugs. They hope to shed new light on why some tumors become drug resistant and to discover more effective therapeutic targets.

False Starts, Unruly Paths

Featuring

  • Dr. Scott Lowe (cancer – tumorigenesis & resistance to chemotherapy; MSKCC)
  • Grace Markman (paint)

Overview

According to Scott Lowe, “my research has shown that p53, a tumor suppressor, plays an important role in “apoptosis” – a form of cell suicide – and in doing so provides a natural brake to tumor development. Cells lacking p53 are more prone to becoming cancerous and more resistant to chemotherapy. Current research in my lab is based on the premise that distinct genetic changes in a patient’s cancer creates molecular dependencies that represent therapeutic opportunities. The lab is also studying genes specifically needed for survival of cancer cells in an effort to identify targets for new cancer therapies. Combining innovative approach to cancer biology research we are working toward identification of new therapeutic strategies to treat some forms of cancer.”

Cancer arises as cells acquire alterations in oncogenes — genes that when mutated may cause a cell to survive and divide indefinitely. But oncogene mutations do not inevitably cause cancer. Normally, cells can “fight back” against oncogene activity through genes called tumor suppressors. Tumor suppressor genes trigger cells to self-destruct or to halt their own growth, preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation and cancer development. The Lowe lab investigates how the disruption of these mechanisms may lead to cancer. They have also found that mutations in tumor suppressors can reduce the effectiveness of some chemotherapy drugs. They hope to shed new light on why some tumors become drug resistant and to discover more effective therapeutic targets.

Markman, “was inspired by Scott’s lab, by the open-ended nature of inquiry, the freedom of investigative methods and the group spirit focused on their goals. I work alone in my studio yet when I close the door to work I have faith in the process of painting, the process of sustaining efforts through many false starts and unruly pathways, similar to scientific methods."

Bios

Grace Markman

www.gracemarkman.com

Born in Paterson New Jersey. She received a BA in Studio Art is from Fordham University and an MFA in painting from Bard College. She has exhibited her work for over twenty years in numerous groups shows both upstate and in New York City. Grace has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center & Byrdcliffe

Dr. Scott Lowe

http://mskcc.org/research/lab/scott-lowe

http://www.hhmi.org/scientists/scott-w-lowe

B.S., UW-Madison; Ph.D., MIT; Associate Dir. Basic Cancer Research, MSKCC; Chair, Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center; Investigator, HHMI & Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

“My research has shown that p53, a tumor suppressor, plays an important role in “apoptosis” – a form of cell suicide – and in doing so provides a natural brake to tumor development. Cells lacking p53 are more prone to becoming cancerous and more resistant to chemotherapy. Current research in my lab is based on the premise that distinct genetic changes in a patient’s cancer creates molecular dependencies that represent therapeutic opportunities. The lab is also studying genes specifically needed for survival of cancer cells in an effort to identify targets for new cancer therapies. Combining innovative approach to cancer biology research we are working toward identification of new therapeutic strategies to treat some forms of cancer.”

Cancer arises as cells acquire alterations in oncogenes — genes that when mutated may cause a cell to survive and divide indefinitely. But oncogene mutations do not inevitably cause cancer. Normally, cells can “fight back” against oncogene activity through genes called tumor suppressors. Tumor suppressor genes trigger cells to self-destruct or to halt their own growth, preventing uncontrolled cell proliferation and cancer development. The Lowe lab investigates how the disruption of these mechanisms may lead to cancer. They have also found that mutations in tumor suppressors can reduce the effectiveness of some chemotherapy drugs. They hope to shed new light on why some tumors become drug resistant and to discover more effective therapeutic targets.

An artist explores parallels between themselves and a scientist

Featuring

  • Dr. Teresa Bandosz (Chemical Engineering, Environmental Issues)
  • Marie Roberts (Painter)

Overview

Dr. Bandosz has a broad experience in the field of materials preparation, and their applications to environmental problems related to development of adsorbents for gas separation. Her work during last 25 years has resulted in 5 US patents and over 290 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her recent research interests include synthesis of Graphene/ MOF. Graphene/hydroxide composites for separation and energy harvesting applications, visible light photoactivity of carbonaceous materials, energy storage and CO2 sequestrations. She is the Editor of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.

The Bandosz lab studies the performance of various commercial activated carbons as adsorbents of odor/gas/contaminant and understanding how to modify the surface of carbons to increase their performance as adsorbents. The goal of their work is to apply their discoveries to environmental pollutants and odors, among other things. The Bandosz lab is also involved in monitoring the performance of activated carbons used to remove hydrogen sulfide odor in the City of New York Water Pollution Control Plants.

Roberts work created for Art of Science is "an attempt to capture in visual language the experience of being exposed to Dr. Bandosz & her work. Some pieces attempt to make pictorial her descriptions of becoming interested in science as a young girl, some are of my memories as a child”

Roberts says, “I was surprised at parallels between this scientist and myself: we both are inveterate coffee drinkers, both driven to do our work. As is my usual practice, I made many drawings from direct observation; then synthesized compositions based on those drawing “notes” in my studio. I would be interested to see what pictorial possibilities I could come up with after all this work, done in such a short time frame, has a chance to stew in my brain.”

Bios

Marie Roberts

www.bitterwonder.com

Native New Yorker, Professor of Art, Fairleigh Dickinson University & Artist in Residence, Coney Island USA where she is the show painter for the world famous Coney Island Circus Sideshow & also Teaching Artist at Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. Work for Art of Science supported by Fairleigh Dickinson.

Dr. Teresa Bandosz

http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/Teresa-J-Bandosz.cfm

Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (Krakow Polytechnic) and D.Sci. in Physical Chemistry (Mari Curie University) . She is a full professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the City College of New York.

Dr. Bandosz has a broad experience in the field of materials preparation, and their applications to environmental problems related to development of adsorbents for gas separation. Her work during last 25 years has resulted in 5 US patents and over 290 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her recent research interests include synthesis of Graphene/ MOF. Graphene/hydroxide composites for separation and energy harvesting applications, visible light photoactivity of carbonaceous materials, energy storage and CO2 sequestrations. She is the Editor of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.

The Bandosz lab studies the performance of various commercial activated carbons as adsorbents of odor/gas/contaminant and understanding how to modify the surface of carbons to increase their performance as adsorbents. The goal of their work is to apply their discoveries to environmental pollutants and odors, among other things. The Bandosz lab is also involved in monitoring the performance of activated carbons used to remove hydrogen sulfide odor in the City of New York Water Pollution Control Plants

A tapestry linking invented creatures and random people

Featuring

  • Dr. Steve Franks (plant evolution & climate change; Fordham University)
  • c.hill (paint & drawing)

Overview

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe. In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection. In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change. The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”

Steve Franks team is establishing a seed bank, Project Baseline, which through a competitive proposal process will one day provide the scientific community access to the archived seeds. Those seeds will be used for grand research projects, with immeasurable consequences, such as resurrection studies (diagram, top right) which have shown early flowering in plants as an adaptation to seasonal drought conditions & climate change.

The underlying theme of c.hill's work was interconnectedness. It "came through to me during my time spent with Dr. Steve Franks & his lab. Their climate change studies using seed collection prompted my series of small interconnected pieces."

C.hill said, "I asked 200 random people to tell me an object & a living creature that don’t go together. This two part answer was combined into one invented creature drawn on individual metro cards, the husks of a giant interconnected system. Cards were then wired together using old telephone wire in the colors of the subway lines. This interconnected tapestry links all of the participants.”

Bios

Dr. Steve Franks

http://www.sfrankslab.wordpress.com/

www.facebook.com/projectbaselineseedbank

Franks at Fordham

BA in Biology from Brown University; Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Georgia.  He worked as a research biologist at the USDA Invasive Plant Research Lab in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and as a postdoctoral researcher in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of CA, Irvine.  Currently Assistant Professor of Biology at Fordham University in New York.

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe.  In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection.  In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change.  The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”

 

An ecologist and an artist create a children's story on interconnectedness

Featuring:

  • Dr. Steve Franks (plant evolution & climate change; Fordham University)
  • Gustavo Asto (collage)

Introduction

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe. In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection. In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change. The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”

Steve Franks team is establishing a seed bank, Project Baseline, which through a competitive proposal process will one day provide the scientific community access to the archived seeds. Those seeds will be used for grand research projects, with immeasurable consequences, such as resurrection studies (diagram, top right) which have shown early flowering in plants as an adaptation to seasonal drought conditions & climate change.

For his work Asto, wanted to have a dialogue through piecing together a short children’s story about a broader theme in his work – interconnectednesss.

The story would inspire the artwork, a collage. Steve mentioned that he had been reading lots of children’s stories to his 3-year old daughter Nina, so we exchanged story ideas, imagining a 3 to 5 year old target audience. Since I work with NYC public school students in grades K through 12 in various arts programs, the story could have the added benefit of allowing me to share, with some of my students, some of what I experienced through meetings with Steve and his team. The story, mostly nonsense and gibberish, is about the misadventures of a leaf, its branch, trunk and root who are each unaware that they are connected to one another. They brag about their natural skills (e.g. The leaf turning the sun’s rays into food), each seeing themselves as the center of the universe. Their buffoonery knows no bounds as they repeatedly sabotage themselves in odd ways because they see themselves as independent of one another.

Steve’s daughter, Nina, served as the model representing the characters development (mischievous, haughty, aware). Her favorite park, Riverside Park, served as the backdrop. Steve sent me photos of Nina. Pages of National Geographic magazines were cut up to create the collage.

Bios

Gustavo Asto

www.smartworksnyc.com

Founder, Smartworks; art education programs in image, visual arts, dance, theater, & music.

Dr. Steve Franks

http://www.sfrankslab.wordpress.com/

www.facebook.com/projectbaselineseedbank

Franks at Fordham

BA in Biology from Brown University; Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Georgia.  He worked as a research biologist at the USDA Invasive Plant Research Lab in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and as a postdoctoral researcher in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of CA, Irvine.  Currently Assistant Professor of Biology at Fordham University in New York.

“Humans are drastically altering the face of the earth by changing the climate, converting the landscape, and transporting plants and animals around the globe.  In some cases, populations may be able to adapt to changing conditions through the process of evolution by natural selection.  In our lab, we study the process of evolution in natural plant populations to better understand responses of plants to global change.  The aim of our research is to gain a more complete understanding of the process of evolution and to generate information that can aid the management and protection of natural plant populations confronted with global change.”