Q: With a PhD from Stanford and post-doctoral work at Harvard, you certainly have an impressive resume. Why are you at MassArt teaching biology to burgeoning artists instead of studying animal behavior or sequencing genes at a lab bench?

Caroline Hu: I’ve always been making art. It has always been a part of how I make meaning from what I’ve been absorbing during the day — from reading, observing animals in their habitats, or looking at data. Then, six years ago, I was at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo — maybe the best comics event in the country — and I met a MassArt biology professor, Saúl Nava. He told me he was an artist, too, and he told me about what he did. I distinctly remember thinking, ‘I want that job.’ Then, last year MassArt created the ISBA department, Saúl became the chair, and the job posting came out. A scientist friend of mine was like, ‘This is your job.’

Q: But really, what does creating art have to do with biology?

Hu: In the sciences, we are always using combinations of texts and images to communicate. We make posters; we make PowerPoint decks, we make diagrams. I realized during my post doc that being able to create visual imagery is a valued skill. It also helps you understand what you’re learning.

Q: How does creating art help you better understand the science?

Hu: As a scientist, you’re always collecting data. Data can be beautiful, but it can also be horrendous and hairy, and absolutely befuddling. Drawing can help in terms of giving shape to something that is otherwise abstract and difficult to grasp. It’s like giving it a little visual container. And you have to know quite a bit about something by the time you get to the point of drawing it. You have to know about the relationships of the components, be able to rotate them in your head. When you can do that, you can then use what you’ve drawn to communicate your knowledge, or your hypothesis, to someone else. So the scientific understanding moves forward.

Q: How does this work in the MassArt classroom?

Hu: I teach three courses, and they’re all different. The first-year seminar [all MassArt students have to take at least one science course] is called Biology and Comics, and all the texts we read are comics. We focus on stories about life on different scales, both molecular and worldwide, and also on comics about climate change and global health. I like to have really expansive variety in that class to show students what’s possible in comics.

Q: What’s the second class you teach?

Hu: The second one is called Biological Form and Function. That comes closest to a standard biology class.

Q: So that class has something like a Bio 101 textbook?

Hu: Not at all. We do things like have a speculative evolution assignment. I’ll ask the class to take a turtle and show me through drawing how it could have evolved to gallop like a horse. It’s a lesson in anatomy and evolution and scientific observation all at once. We’ll also do things like look at 3D databases of skulls and examine the teeth of animals like bears to make predictions about their diet. Then, if a student wants to have a bear show up in an animation later on, they’ll know there’s this whole database that has awesome bear skull scans. It’s been absolutely delightful to see how much inspiration the students draw from the course material.

Q: That’s terrific that you get the students so inspired! What about the third course you offer?

Hu: That’s a senior summative class called Science Communication and Comics. I’ll challenge the students to make characters out of non-humans. I’ll challenge them to come up with visual metaphors to explain something relatively esoteric, and what they come up with and how open and encouraging they are with each other has just been awesome! I also challenge the students to make a comic about original science with the scientist who did the research — because just being a great artist or just being a great scientist does not make you a great science communicator. That is its own discipline. 

Q: But how do you get scientists to collaborate with your students?

Hu: I put out a call to scientists on social media, telling them that they will be working with undergraduate students and will be expected not only to present their science but also to give feedback on the scientific accuracy of the illustrations the students create.

Q: Yes, but are scientists at respected institutions willing to work with the students?

Hu: When I put out the call last year, I had more than 1,400 scientists ask to participate from all over the world — the U.S., Scotland, the Philippines…applicants from every continent. There are only 15 students in the class! One of my students ended up working with an astrophysicist at Harvard who studies the origins of galaxies. She approaches it like an archeologist. The stars are her artifacts, and she tries to deduce their history. The student drew depictions to connect the archeological approach to the work, and the scientist presented it at an astrophysics conference.

Q: Wow, that’s incredible that you had 1,400 scientists asking to work with MassArt students! What do you think about opportunities to work with scientists once the students graduate?

Hu: I think they’re there, for sure. I’ve already had people reach out to me who want to give students internships — at the University of Alabama, the University of Maryland, and the University of Pennsylvania. The guy at Penn is thinking of having students visit field sites in the Panama jungle to document the research process and animals in their natural habitats. From internships come jobs.

But also, I would love for MassArt, given its prime location in a city that is one of the major hubs in the world for biological research, to be a place where we can connect people interested in the intersection of science, the arts, and community. It makes perfect sense to bring scientists and artists together. Biology is the study of life. That’s what artists are doing, anyway. They’re just studying life.