The art of science and the science of art

"Making Art for Scientists" summer course at MIT invited scientists and engineers to explore new ways to visualize and represent their research. Hannah Munguia Flores is a third-year student at MIT working on a double master's degree in aerospace engineering and technology and policy. On most days she studies the carbon cycle, and searches for sustainable crops that could be transformed into biofuels for jet engines. But on this late summer day, Munguia Flores was decorating paper fighter planes with a collage of grains and algae she designed on her computer. "My academic advisor asked me to make a drawing of the carbon cycle," says Munguia Flores, who took "Making Art for Scientists: Materials, Processes and Information Relay" over the summer with instructor and artist Timothy Lee. Offered through the MIT Arts Studios (formerly the Student Art Association), the course invites scientists and engineers to explore new ways to visualize and represent their research. "And I realized there was a part of it I was missing.