- Welcome everyone, to Wednesday Nite at The Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen. I work here at the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW-Extension, Cooperative Extension, and on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Alumni Association and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Night at the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year. Tonight, it's my pleasure to introduce to you Ahna Skop. She's a professor here in the Genetics department. She's also on the board of the Wisconsin Science Museum. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and graduated from high school in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. She went to Syracuse University for her undergrad and came here for her Ph.D., did a post-doc at the University of California Berkeley, and then came back here to be on the faculty. Tonight she's going to talk about Too Creative for Science? Please join me in welcoming Ahna Skop to Wednesday Night at the Lab.  (applause)   - Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. So I just want to apologize ahead of time. I am getting over a very bad sinus infection, so I talk low, I have a very deep voice, but not this deep. But I'm going to tell you a story about my life. And then how that has influenced my career. It's probably a little unconventional, but it's a great story, especially to tell students and also the public about one's path in life. So the title's called Too Creative for Science? And I'm going to get into what that means in a few slides down the road. But first, the outline that I'm going to talk about today is I'll tell you about my family, I'll tell you about what this being too creative actually means, a little bit about my science, a little bit about my teaching and then science as art. So I have a whole bunch of stuff to tell you tonight. But a lot of it is going to be visual and it's going to be exciting, so hopefully you'll keep your attention. Being a geneticist, most important thing is, what is my genetics. So I need to tell you that before you know who I am. So this is a pedigree, this is my family. So my father, so I come from a family of artists. My entire family are artists. My father was a sculptor and a medical illustrator and also taught anatomy to medical students. Right off the bat that's unusual, right? My mother was a ceramist and an art educator. They had four children.  I'm the oldest, I became the scientist. My next two sisters are graphic designer. My brother is an industrial designer. So how the heck did I end up a scientist? You could see that my father had a keen interest in science so he is more classically trained, European trained in the arts, and the art and science for him was no separation. And so that was my life. However, as many of you know, in the education system in America, people have separated science and art. So my story is of how did I overcome that from a household like this. So my father mentor was Ivan Mestrovic, which is over here. He was a pupil of Rodin. Most people know Rodin and The Thinker. Mestrovic, you may have seen the work. So if you've been down in Chicago's Grant Park, The Bowman and the Spearman are by Mestrovic and my father helped cast those. So in some ways you've seen my dad's work. So that's my dad's work. Here's a picture from my home, where I grew up. There's my father doing a bust of his football coach. My father was the winning football player at Syracuse, played with Jim Brown and went to the Orange Bowl, as did my brother. Very unusual as well. This was his coach. Ernie Davis was also on the team, I think right before my father, and so this is one of the most winningest coach at Syracuse. But I grew up with very dirty, messy floors and I became, have a very sterile environment in a laboratory, but this is what I knew growing up. My father had an art school at my house, and people came from all over the world to study with my father. From Japan and England, but as you can see, in the 70's, and here I am at the top, it's a bunch of hippies, right? Lots of people, but not only just a free-spirited bunch, people who have become actresses and art dealers. Some of them musicians and architects. So very eclectic group. I grew up thinking these people were my brothers and sisters. They still are, until today. And it was just an unbelievably rich environment in which to grow up. And so this was my life. I grew up in a very unusual home. You may think I'm wealthy. I grew up in a family of artists. We didn't have very much money. I was born in New Haven and then I moved. This is in Kentucky, in northern Kentucky in a town called Fort Thomas. It's an old Civil War fort. And so my father grew up in a very poor single parent home. And played football, got a full ride to school, and when he went to art school, his mentors always gave him opportunities, and this is a story of this house is another story of opportunities and the power of networking. I always like to tell people this story. His mentor says, there's an ad in a newspaper. There wasn't internet. Back in the days people read the classifieds. There was an ad in the newspaper that there was an artist, Julian Bechtold, who was looking for another artist because he was getting old and sick, to take care of this home he had built in Kentucky. My dad applied for this competition. Given that he had four kids. And so we moved from Connecticut to Kentucky. We won this home, which had a studio and everything. The cool thing, a little history about Julian Bechtold, is the Cincinnati area, if many of you know, is Proctor and Gamble is housed there. So the cool thing about this house is this is where the very first Ivory soap bar was carved, and that was done by Julian Bechtold. And so that was my life, we had a series of things through networking and mentorship that had allowed us to live a seemingly rich and wealthy life. These are pictures of Julian Bechtold around the house. There's a sculpture and then reliefs, walking into the home. My brother has purchased the home and renovated it, so this is the old studio where actually they had plaster and clay, but my brother's an industrial designer there working at home. Unbelievably beautiful place. And then the backyard, my dad had all of these, wanted to learn how to garden and pour concrete, make a rose garden, and all these kinds of things, in addition to scattering sculptures throughout the home. By the time when I reached high school, my father had  Let's see. So what have I learned from this? So I learned from this, you know, sometimes people say things to you and they upset you. They change your mind about it. But also, I realized that sometimes you have to make up your own decisions for yourself and you've got to do the research and find the facts and realize that you're right. And what I also learned is that scientists and artists have a lot of things in common. And they develop ideas that are new and useful, which is actually the definition of creativity. So I belong here. It's definitely where I need to be. And I found a quote recently that I really love. So there's a psychologist at UC Berkeley. She says, "Scientists are actually the few people "who as adults get to have protective time "when they can just explore, play, "figure out what the world is like. "Scientists are simply big children." So I realize I'm probably the biggest child around and I know many scientists are that way. And so I realize, you know, in addition to this really creative side of scientists' life, they're also simply very playful and inquisitive people. And so I decided to pursue science.  I'll share a little bit about what I do in my lab. When I first joined the lab at Syracuse, I joined a lab working on RNA splicing. I don't know if anyone, you love RNA splicing. I don't really like it still today. But this is how you assay it, with a DNA gel. Don't know how many people have seen a DNA gel here. I think this is terribly boring and I don't find it biology. Some people actually like to put it in their home as art. I don't really care for it. It's maybe better as art than for me as science. I don't really get anything out of it. But what I fell in love with in my textbook was an image like this. This is a mitotic cell embryo of a nematode that I still work on today that I started in my undergraduate. And those are the DNA and the chromosomes labeled in the middle. I thought this was the Picasso. I'd never seen anything like this. I was like, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And so I wanted to figure this out because it was so beautiful. Not because it needed to work out. I didn't know what it was important for. I had no clue what it was important for. But I knew it was beautiful and I knew that some kind of molecules and machines had to be involved in building that, and that's something my lab works on today. So for me, this idea of beauty inspiring curiosity is really important to me and so everything I do comes from that visual. I am a visual learner. I'm also dyslexic, like Einstein was, like Leonardo da Vinci was, so this visual learning thing is really important to how I understand and learn. So my lab studies the cell division process from one cell to two cells. And so the big question in the field is that we don't know all the molecules that are to get this one cell to two, but we know if we do, we can inhibit cell division. And that's important for several reasons. Many of them, as you probably know, when cell division goes out of control, you get a tumor, right? You get a cancerous cell, so it divides out of control. The other thing you probably know is also you get birth defects, trisomy 21, chromosomes are going in the wrong way. Right? The other part of it is there is often asymmetric division in which it helps to arise to stem cells. So you get one cell becoming different from the other. And that cell division is involved in that process. What you may not know, and something I'm working on in my lab, is that cells actually in neurodegenerative patients, in the brain, are actually failing to divide. And this is really really new, and some hypotheses we're trying to test. Before I actually go study my problem, I like to go back to the first science artist that actually looked at my process. So Walther Flemming is sort of my icon. He's actually the father of mitosis, also an artist, which is great. And the red arrows here are marking something that he thought was really important. And so this was in 1891. So this structure is often called the Flemming body. Today it's called the mid-body. And so he thought this was super important. At the time when I was in graduate school, in the mid 90's, people thought this was the garbage can of the cell. But however, this guy in 1891 thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Something is really important because all cells have it. So what did I do? Well, applied new technology. So my lab is sort of famous for doing isolating the structure and doing something called midbody proteomics. So we isolated the structure and we seek and solve the proteins in there. So just like DNA sequencing, you're getting all the DNA base pairs out, these are all the proteins within the structure. So it's not a garbage can, there's stuff there that's important, and I knocked out all these genes and they all have cell division defects. That was the surprise to many. So not a garbage can. One of the proteins I'm working on currently is something called Ataxin-2. So these are mammalian cells, this is mammalian gene, Ataxin-2. So one of the reasons why I want to study it, is it belongs to, in humans, when it's mutated, it causes a human neurodegenerative d  So you can imagine someone from an art background how they might approach teaching. Or not, you might not imagine it. Listen, how many people have been to an art museum? A lot of people. How many people thought they were an artist after they came out of there? No, right? Okay, how many people have picked up clay and made a sculpture, maybe? Ceramics, yeah? How many people felt more like an artist there? Most people probably say yeah. How many people in a big lecture room like this? Do you think you're a scientist after you sat in a room like this? I didn't either. I didn't think this was science. So my own experience and my own experience from my background, I had to get in there and see it and do it in order to learn and understand. And it wasn't until I had courses like that where I was actively learning and doing stuff. So that was inherent for me to do that in the classroom as well. The other part that's really important to me also, is I always felt that "The only thing that interferes "with my learning is my education." It's a famous quote. I put this photo together with it. I think it's really important. Most of you probably shot yourself in the face with a water gun, right? You probably may never have done it again. But you've done it to someone else because it's funny. Education has always been a place where I wasn't able to get my hands in because a lot of people are lecturing. You need to really get students engaged with science by doing. The other thing driving also the way I teach, is the education system itself. This quote by Ken Robinson is saying that we're educating out of their creativity. Why, because these horrible things called bubble sheets. And the idea is that conformity and not diversity of thought is actually what's awarded in the classroom. And that's a horrible thing. Because everyone needs to fill in the same bubble. And so how do we get around this? What are the thoughts of how to change that? It's a numbers game. The other thing that drives me, given my mother has native American background, but in addition I have very diverse family, is this problem. And so in the National Science Foundation, if you look at the percentage of STEM doctorates over time, what has happened is the number of women, like myself, have increased over time, as has the number of international students. But what has stayed the same is the numbers of Hispanics, Blacks, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, less than 5% of all Ph.Ds. So the question is, why is this happening? So my idea is change the way you teach. Simply, we're losing this because maybe there's different ways of learning, culturally. Backgrounds, arts are really important in culture. And so trying to include both of those things in the classroom is really important. The other thing comes from this learning period that a lot of teachers actually look at. So average student retention rates actually increased if you practiced by doing and discuss and you teach others. Here's the lecture up at the top, that's the default. You get very little retention by sitting at a lecture like you're sitting here. You may, hopefully, more. But you know, actually doing things is really important. The other thing, given my diversity interest, is this. This is a famous picture probably many of you have seen. For a fair selection, everybody has to take the same exam. Climb the tree, who's going to climb the tree? Probably the monkey. But the other important thing is that I can have a classroom of all elephants, but the thing is, diversity is not just on the outside, it's actually what's inside. We all have different modes of learning, like myself. I'm dyslexic, I learn by seeing. Some people are really good at doing. I'm seeing and doing. Some people can just listen and understand it. I have students like that, I don't even know what they're talking about. I have to doodle it. So understanding and being very sensitive to the fact that there's different modes of learning is also equally important to try to get the success rate up of the students. So what did I do? I cre  Science as art. So I grew up in the household of artists. So when I came here as a grad student, I began to go to scientific conferences. And it was clear that there was sort of an art component, but I saw logos happening. And then I started doing logos for meetings. So this was one of my first logos. This is for the worm that you saw. So it was all iterations of ... And I became very famous for these, by one of the most famous images in my model organism all over the world, everyone knows I've done these. And so I gained a lot of confidence from that. I realized I could use my skills in the arts to help the scientific community communicate or at least to have fun. Throughout grad school I also was keenly aware that there is very little that the normal public sees or yourself can see with the naked eye. But as scientists, the tree of life, we often get to see a lot of these things. And I'm keenly aware as a scientist who's funded publicly, that if we could see all these beautiful organisms here, why can't we share it with the public? And so I put my ideas together of growing up in a household of artists and doing art shows, and I came up with a C. elegans worm art show. So I started as grad student. I was told in my lab that I'm making a huge mistake. I'm a big mistake, it'll ruin your career for life. I'm still here, right? And it's now an ongoing event. This is my 20th year that I'm doing this summer. It's gotten a lot of press in a lot of scientist magazines. This is sort of what I became famous for. And so when I went up on the job market, most people introduced me as the girl who does the art show but also is an amazing scientist. So it was a really cool marketing tool for me. But for me it's just a passion. It came from my-- This is a normal part of my life. That visual and art. So I'm going to show you some examples. It also was part of that soul searching again, where I struggled to find a mentor that really understood my creative level. I found other scientists, this is my first year, Steve Johnson's now professor. This is C. elegans, stained glass C. elegans. People love this nematode. It's loved by all. It's amazingly beautiful. Here's another one. This is worms having sex. On a boutique arena. Some people get inspired by Andy Wormhol, this is a real science. People are getting inspired. These are things that aren't shared in publications, but it's really great at engaging the public because they know what that is. They've seen it. This is probably the most beautiful gonad you'll probably look at. This is C. elegan's gonad, this is all the DNA labeled in the hermaphrodite. And Abby Dernberg is my first Howard Hughes investigator who, she won the very first art show. And so all the people I've showed you have all become faculty members. So it became over the years a testament to the fact that people who are amazing at doing imaging and art are also really good at science. And so that made me feel really good that I was in the right group and crowd. So here's a few things that I've done. These look like lips but these are gonad lips. Something you wouldn't imagine. Anyone want to guess what this might be? There's the little worm here.  Anything?  What jumps out at you? Coffee beans, I always get coffee beans. Looks like a UFO, maybe?  These are actually air bubbles. So these are air bubbles, so these are on petri plates on agar. And so the amazing thing is that the time and temperature to solidify the agar amazingly made these air bubbles at a perfect UFO shape. And I think sometimes when you're looking down the microscope some days, you jump back and you try to wonder how that happened. And you're like what the heck is it, is it a coffee bean, is it a UFO? But it puts your place in the world. You know you see the worm and it is sort of this extraterrestrial thing. But the great thing about an example of image like that, the public knows what a UFO is, the public knows what the coffee bean is, and so if you can introduce them to something they know and then give them the scary thing called the nematode that is everywhere on the earth, you can connect them and talk to them about science. And so that's what's really been great about these art shows. From these shows, when I became a faculty back here, given a little more opportunities, so I came back here and my lab is in the next building over, which is a little newer than we are here. And I came here and I walked in the foyer and was like, "Oh my God, I can't work here." It was all white walls, giant white walls. I was like this is impossible, a daughter of an artist can't be in a building with nothing on the wall. So I walked myself up to the dean's office and I said, I got an idea. I would like to do a scientific art installation in the building, and I was given $15,000. I've never been given that amount of money, just by talking. So if you've walked into the foyer over there, that is the installation I did of all the science art that is coming from our department. And now busloads of students come through here and see that science. And so this is what it looks like. You maybe have seen this if you walked in through the other door. So from that, the art department got word of that, and I went to a couple talks down in the art department. And they said to me, omigosh, you've been doing these shows, we all know who you are. Let's do something together. So we ended up doing this tiny scientific art show which was at the airport in 2009 to 2010. This is the most popular show that's ever been in the airport, partly because there were all of these awesome, beautiful images but no one knew what they are, so you had to really go look around and guess what they were. There was an overflowing comment box, of like, this is amazing, I want to see more. And these were all images from the university. So again, this idea of engaging with the public. And there are a lot of this on campus that do imaging, who are part of this show, that have just got enormous support. And also the Alumni Association as well, thought this was great, to connect with those outside. Here's an example of a few things that showed up here. I love this image because it looks like a bunch of needles. What is this? It's actually zinc oxide nanorods. You may not know what it is, but it's what's in the solar cells and collects the sun. Amazingly beautiful at this scale in EM here. This is a drosophila fruit fly embryo by Sean Carroll. This is your fruit fly that eats your bananas. This is probably the most beautiful thing that eats your bananas. So this is an embryo where all these genes are expressed in different stripes. And this ended up on the front cover of the New York Times one Easter, thinking it's an Easter egg development. That's also over on that wall. This is probably, I love this image a lot. I'm not a plant biologist. This is on a plant. Does anybody know what this is? Trichome, yay, we got it. So if you've hiked in the woods and you got attacked by a plant, this is the thing that attacks you. It looks extraterrestrial. It actually comes from this little mustard plant that all scientists, a lot of people on this campus use, to do genetics. And it's been sequenced. And so this is on the underside of the leaf. And the trichomes a