The overall goal of my artistic endeavours is to spread the ideals of scientific inquiry to a broader audience. To this end, I use various media, such as YPD, letter writing, oil pastels, stickers, and short, shortfilms, in order to connect biological concepts with the human experience. Through these exploits, I hope to capture the imaginations of youthful centenarians, of aging adults, and of all cry babies alike...
Of eggs, of sperms, and of all "conscious" multicellular creatures alike...
Of mothers, of fathers, of daughters, of sons; of all parents, and of all offspring alike…
Of sisters, of brothers, of cousins, of cultural aunties, and of uncultured uncles;
Of all people, alike and disalike.
By appealing to the fundamental sensibilities of emotion and awe, I hope to nudge audiences towards a state of meaningful self-reflection, colourful self-refraction, and smiles : )
A visual poem that attempts to bridge scientific phenomena with the human experience. This was created with Beatrice Copeland for the Symbiosis Competition at this years Imagine Science Film Festival.
Denoting energy, courage and know-how, Moxie follows the romantic ideals of my sci-artivist bent, the beauty of which I attempt to "deliver" to the world. This short film is a nod to my Symbiosis competition experience at this year's Imagine Science Film Festival. It is also visual "thank you" to my advisor, Dir. Beatrice Copeland, from whom I learned a lot about how to craft a visually compelling story.
He’s a budding budding yeast professor
My model organism of choice for research is the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. My scientific role model is my advisor Dr. Andreas Hochwagen. We were asked to make a GIF or short video melding these two topics for a recent department retreat. I went a bit weird with this animation, drawing inspiration from eccentric youtube birthday videos. There is also a bunch of cryptic science mixed into this chaotic video describing the life cycle of a budding yeast. It starts off with the vegetative growth phase of mitotically dividing cells that inevitably depletes shared resources and leads to “stress”-induced mating type switching (gender transformation), diploid formation (yeast sex), and eventually to the formation of spores (the future generation) after meiotic division.
This video was my first attempt at lab vlogging. Here, I made a brief "how-to" video for Southern blotting. This technique is an oldie but goodie, as it remains one of the most accurate molecular methods to describe the genetic features of whole chromosomes. Moreover, Southern blotting has been a faithful stead of mine throughout a sometimes trying, yet fruitful graduate career.
About Author
Andrés Mansisidor is a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. Andreas Hochwagen at the NYU Biology Department. He is currently motivated to help “crack the repetitive DNA code”. Specifically, he seeks to understand how DNA repair and nuclear organization are coordinated in an effort to preserve genome stability (super important stuff). Andrés is currently in the final year(s) of his thesis, after which he will pursue an independent researcher position. He also wishes to expand the influence of scientific discovery beyond academia, a task that he has begun to address by honing his skills as a sci-artivist. He currently writes a "weekly" epistolarian blog, is co-founding a science-sticker "company," and participates in various forms of educational outreach - yes.
New science sticker "company" (coming soon)
RedBubble (alternative site for science stickers and memorabilia)
