Picturing science and engineering
- PDF / 4,236,669 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 4 Downloads / 217 Views
xxxxxxxx
Picturing science and engineering Felice C. Frankel Submitted May 26, 2020; Accepted June 9, 2020
W
research in the future will result in a significant drop in the numhen I began writing this article, it was just the beginning ber of students entering graduate programs in science and engiof COVID-19, when we were not yet social distancing. neering. They might choose, perhaps, the more computational Everything has changed since then, but not a conviction I have road not because of disinterest in experimentation, but out of disseminated for more than 25 years. More than ever, I maintain pragmatism. Then again, the upward swing of using computathat formally addressing the critical visual component of research tion in all kinds of research has already begun. Perhaps, building should be part of every researcher’s education. How you visually on that groundwork will help keep the labs running and attract represent your work not only communicates to others in your diseven more students as we return to some sort of normalcy. cipline. Crafting your visual presentations helps clarify your own But, wherever you land, think about this. When you read the thinking and, just as important, is a means of engaging the public. title and abstract of a particular journal article, do you immediIn these challenging times, when society is bombarded with ately begin reading the article, or do you first take a look at the complex information, it is more essential than ever to develop a figures right after reading the abstract? I often ask that quesmore accessible and honest visual “language” for the public to tion to my students in our understand and gather that MIT workshops on visual information. Formal procommunication, and they grams in teaching visual agree that they do, in fact, communication will help go right to the figures. show the world, outside My colleague Alyssa the research community, Goodman, professor of how to look at science, astronomy at Harvard understand it, question University, is as passionit, and, hopefully, make ate about the importance smart decisions. of communicative visual Many of you might izations as I. She ran an be putting part of your informal survey of sturesearch on a temporary dents with 276 responses. hold, especially those at The question was “When the benches. The theodo you usually look at the retical and computational figures in a paper?” The researchers are probably response: 55.1% said that still in business. My own Figure 1. Laboratory-made material emulating sea otter, fabricated for insulation studies.1 © Felice C. Frankel. they, “look at the figures campus has been ramping after reading the titles and up research, and it is apabstract;” 14.9% “mostly parent laboratories will be look at the figures and read some text while doing that.” That’s redefined for the time being. Perhaps theoretical and computa70% of the responses, indicating the importance of the figures tional researchers will not be as restricted. But for the rest, I can when reading an article. If that is the case, then
Data Loading...
