The design of scientific figures is a key step that all researchers undertake as they present or publish their work, but one that they typically receive little training or education on how to do effectively. The Waterloo Electrochemical Society Student Chapter (WatECS) is delighted to invite you to attend a workshop on designing scientific figures, hosted by Professor Felice Frankel.
Frankel is a science photographer and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an internationally recognized expert in scientific graphics, visualization, photography, and communication of scientific results to the public.
Frankel has been holding these virtual workshops at MIT and around the world for some time now. They are excellent opportunities for everyone to think in a new way about how they present their data to both scientific and lay audiences; and this process has feedback value as well, as thinking about how to explain a scientific result is the best avenue to clarify the result to oneself too, and obtain further insights and inspirations.
There are two levels of participation in this workshop.
The first is for those who will commit to submit a draft figure for discussion. Ten participants/figures will be selected from those who apply and Frankel will go through these figures in the workshop to suggest changes and improvements, giving first-hand feedback. Selection will be based on those who submit first and those coming from different research groups. Priority will be given to WatECS members. Figures do not need to be in their final form – they should be drafts – and can take many forms, including schematics, images or graphs. The ten first-level participants will also win a copy of Frankel's latest book, Picturing Science and Engineering.
Deadline for figure submission: February 11, 2021. Directions for figure submission will be sent to you separately.
The second level of participation is for those who want to simply observe the workshop. There will also be a raffle prize of five additional copies of Picturing Science and Engineering for participants observing the workshop.
Registration deadline for workshop observation: February 24, 2021.
Biographical Sketch
Science photographer Felice Frankel is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Chemical Engineering with additional support from Mechanical Engineering. She joined MIT in 1994. Frankel is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the Initiative for Innovative Computing (IIC), and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Systems Biology.
Frankel developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX addressing science and engineering photography. In 2001, Frankel founded the Image and Meaning workshops and conferences whose purpose was to develop new approaches to promote the public understanding of science through visual expression. She was also principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded program, “Picturing to Learn”, an effort to study how making representations by students, aids in teaching and learning. Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, Felice Frankel’s images have appeared in outlets such as National Geographic, Nature, Science, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, Materials Today, PNAS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science and New Scientist, among others.
More details on Frankel’s work can be found on her website https://felicefrankel.com/