SciArt Magazine - All Issues December 2015 | Page 28

When she began her position in Utah in 2013, she already had years of experience creating molecular animation. From 2006 to 2008 she was a post–doctoral fellow
at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical
School, and Boston’s Museum of Science, and from 2008
to 2012 she was a lecturer in molecular visualization at
Harvard Medical School. Once at Utah she found that
there were biologists on the faculty who were interested
in the structure of the HIV molecule. She joined with
them and other researchers around the world to start
the Science of HIV project. Science of HIV comprises
a suite of animations that illustrate the virus’s life cycle,
including how it enters human cells and uses them to
reproduce.
The animations “highlight what we currently know”
about HIV, says Iwasa. “It’s a hard project, but it performs an important service. The research we do is,
by and large, paid for by tax dollars and so we have a
responsibility to provide an explanation to the public
about what we do and why it’s important and deserving
of funding. I think that outreach projects like Science of
HIV provide a means to describe research in an accessible way and that this communication between researchers and the public should be a priority.”
Iwasa has also designed and released her own animation program known as Molecular Flipbook. She became
interested in designing her own software when she
learned that other researchers wanted to create animations, too, but had a hard time mastering the programs,
which are not intuitive. The program also includes
a place where scientists can share their animations.
Sharing information is rare in the animation community because animations are so hard to create; Iwasa

hopes that by creating software that is easy to learn, she
might make it more acceptable for scientists to share
their work.
The first version of Molecular Flipbook has been released and Iwasa hopes to get more funding to improve
and expand its capabilities. The program is significant
because it’s what Iwasa calls a “proof of principle,” a
demonstration that shows it’s possible to create easy–
to–learn animation programs. It’s “something that the
biology community has been looking for,” she states.
As for the future of molecular animation, Iwasa envisions a time when biological images can inspire the public just as other science–themed images do. “How can we
use images to create a source of awe, just as astronomy
does?” Iwasa wonders. “We need the biology equivalent
of the Hubble Space Telescope.” Iwasa might be just the
person to make that happen.
Top: Leading Edge (2007). Image courtesy of Iwasa.
Highly branched cytoskeletal networks at the leading edge of motile cells are
shown in this illustration. Actin filaments are shown in shades of blue and
green, capping protein in magenta, Arp2/3 in yellow and tropomyosin in
salmon. Collaboration with Dyche Mullins (University of California, San
Francisco).
Left: Protocell (2008). Image courtesy of Iwasa.
Highly branched cytoskeletal networks at the leading edge of motile cells are
shown in this illustration. Actin filaments are shown in shades of blue and
green, capping protein in magenta, Arp2/3 in yellow and tropomyosin in
salmon. Collaboration with Dyche Mullins (University of California, San
Francisco).

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SciArt in America December 2015