In this SciArt profile, we meet Brittany Carr, an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. In her artwork, Brittany uses acrylic, watercolour, gouache, and ink to create pictures of the natural world, while she is also a fan of using microscopy for ‘science’ art.

Can you tell us about your background and what you work on now?

During my PhD research, I was interested in pharmacological control of myopia, and investigating off-target drug effects of muscarinic antagonists in the chicken eye. I then switched to inherited retinal degeneration for my postdoctoral studies, where I learned to use frogs as a model organism. I studied the effects of loss of two genes: PROM1 and CDHR1 on photoreceptor outer segment morphogenesis and retinal degeneration. I started my independent research career in 2022. I am still interested in PROM1 and in using frogs to develop other models of inherited and age-related blindness. We have a few interesting projects in the lab that a new for me including looking at microglia and retinal inflammation, and retinal development.

Were you always going to be a scientist?

I was always interested in science as a kid and read every science book that I could get my hands on. I was the first person in my family to go to university, however, so I didn’t know how it was possible for me to actually become a ‘real’ scientist. I joined a pre-med undergraduate program with the intention to go to Optometry school. I was fortunate enough as a 3^rd year undergraduate student to meet an incredible mentor, who invited me to join his lab and gave me free reign to do science. The first time I prepared an immunofluorescence slide of chicken retinal amacrine cells and looked at it under the microscope, I was absolutely hooked. From then on, I knew academia was the only place I wanted to be and I was lucky enough to have landed myself in a lab where there was a mentor who knew exactly how to help me make it happen.

And what about art – have you always enjoyed it?

Yes, I have always enjoyed art and drawing. I spent a lot of time in elementary, middle- and high-school drawing instead of taking notes or doing homework during my classes. There was a time where I was at a crossroads and had to make the decision to choose between art school and science. I chose (at the time) to pursue optometry. Then, later on, when I discovered microscopy I got to learn a technique where I could express myself artistically again in a scientific career. I am a self-taught artist, but I recently moved a few blocks away from an Atelier, where I can now take art classes. It’s been a lot of fun getting to spend time just painting and growing my art skills.

What or who are your most important artistic influences?

I have always been attracted to the ‘creepy’ or ‘weird’ artists, or loose, bright, and impressionistic landscape artists. People like H.R. Giger, Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Hester Berry, Julia Veenstra, and a whole bunch of local artists, including Di, Erinn Evans, Oksana Zhelisko, Jared Robinson, and Justina Smith.

How do you make your art?

I dabble in a bunch of mediums, but primarily acrylic, watercolor, gouache, and ink. Practically speaking, I make most of my art in classes now, because running a lab and doing research is a lot of work, and nothing forces you to make art like paying money for a 4-6 hr block of time to do nothing else but make art. When the weather is nice, I like to take my sketchbook and work plein air. I am fortunate to live somewhere surrounded by nature, so I like to take advantage of that.

Does your science influence your art at all, or vice versa, or are they separate worlds?

I think that I like the same themes between my science and my art (nature, bright colours, high contrast), but they have two different goals. For science, you can make aesthetic things, but the goal is always to convey knowledge. Because of this, I approach my ‘science’ art differently than I do my traditional art, which for me, is just to make things that make me happy. I definitely take micrographs for aesthetic reasons, and most of these end up on social media and my webpage, not so often in actual papers or diagrams. The subjects that I draw in traditional art are not overtly science-themed, and instead are more focussed on landscapes and ‘macro’ nature, such as birds and animals, or silly things that I do just for the joy of it with no need to convey a message.

What are you thinking of working on next?

I’m the type of person that doesn’t paint until inspiration hits me, and then I can’t not paint until the idea in my head is realized. I live in a fairly quirky city now, and so I do want to do some small paintings of “Just Edmonton Things” that I have seen or experienced since moving here that I found funny or interesting.

How/ where can people find more about you?

I am most active on bluesky @drbjcarr.bsky.social, where I post mostly about science, but share my art and photography too.

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Recently, I attended the biennial meeting of the German Society for Developmental Biology (GfE). This was my second time attending one of these meetings, and I was looking forward to it, having missed the last one a couple of years ago. Everyone from my scientific circle, here in Germany, thinks of these meetings as having a homely feeling with a close-knit familial atmosphere, and this meeting was no different. The meeting this time was even more special with members of the Dutch (DSDB) and Spanish (SEBD) societies joining in as well.

The meeting took place in Potsdam over the course of 4 days, on a university campus: a welcome trend in the GfE meetings, where the meetings are typically organised in an academic backdrop, instead of a commercial conference center. I believe this is a great strategy to keep registration fees low, making the meeting widely accessible to the community. With plenty of coffee and food to go around, the meeting struck a nice balance between great science and the time to digest it all.

These meetings are always a great opportunity to reconnect with your local scientific network. Having attended one of the previous iterations, I was looking forward to seeing some of my old colleagues. I am sure many others were also able to interact with colleagues from Spain and the Netherlands, creating new connections. With about 150 participants, the meeting was just the right size to not be overwhelming, with the international crowd finding ample opportunities to intermingle. The relatively small size naturally obviates the need for having parallel sessions, thus not forcing one to make the difficult choice of missing out on interesting talks. Despite its small size, the meeting had a significant presence on social media, with #GfE2026 trending on the feeds.

Covering topics from the basics of embryonic development to disease modeling, the conference showcased the latest and greatest in classical model systems, as well as emerging ones. As usual, the presence of in vitro embryo models was noteworthy, with a concerted drive towards increasing throughput and reproducibility in these systems. Surprisingly, -omics techniques (especially, single-cell RNA-Seq) were a bit underrepresented, giving the impression that perhaps the community has now gotten over the novelty-driven early excitement. Instead, there was an exciting abundance of talks and posters focusing on the role of mechanical regulation in biological systems (cell-, tissue- mechanics, mechanical manipulations and characterizations, etc.) at all stages of development.

Speaking of posters: while the quality of the posters was excellent, the duration of the poster sessions left something to be desired. Given how well organised this meeting was, commenting about shorter poster sessions feels nitpicky. However, there seems to be a broader emerging trend in conferences that needs to be addressed: more often than not, the space for poster sessions is limited, preventing the presenters from displaying the posters throughout the meeting. It is disheartening to have one’s poster propped up for a couple of days at best, not getting the attention that it deserves, after having spent hours preparing it. We, as a community, need to make a change and Make Poster-sessions Great Again: poster sessions should not feel like an afterthought. Participants should be allowed to display and celebrate their work throughout the meeting, with even- vs. odd-numbered posters being presented in different poster sessions. In any case, I particularly appreciated the novelty of many of the findings presented in talks and posters, with many unpublished results, whether completely new or freshly available as preprints.

One of the highlights of the conference was the PhD Award Lecture by Tatiana Lebedeva and the Hilde Mangold Award Lecture by Maik Bischoff. Tatiana walked us through her experiments with Nematostella vectensis embryos, where she focused on germ layer specification and gastrulation. It was great to see her grit and optimism despite the painstakingly difficult journey of trying to create transgenic animals to visualize β-catenin expression in embryos of this species. Maik talked about his work on the emergence of chirality in biological systems through tissue interactions. Although working with Drosophila melanogaster – a conventional model organism – he demonstrated how the field needs to use these experimental systems to ask increasingly challenging questions. Listening to these and other talks, I couldn’t help but wonder about the future of model organisms in developmental biology research. While research on non-model species is a necessary challenge and a welcome change for the field, work by Maik and others at the conference showed that model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster still have their relevance. We are certainly in an age in which what was once frontier research in model organisms is now a territory being increasingly captured by non-model organisms. The only way to keep these conventional models relevant is to ask increasingly challenging questions and push the limits of what was once possible. (See this recent preprint, which talks about diminishing representation of model organisms in scientific literature over the past couple of decades, and what that might mean for the future of basic and applied research in biology.)

Thankfully, the weather was somewhat on our side, with some sunshine allowing us to sit outdoors during lunch times. The conference dinner on the waterfront was exceptional: I don’t remember having had better food at a conference in recent memory, and from what I hear, I missed out on a similarly excellent food during the last meeting. Keeping up with the tradition, the dance party followed, with great music till 1 am, when we were gently “forced” out of the restaurant. I suppose the next meeting (in 2028 at Heidelberg) has a lot to live up to.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Alex Eve and Verena Kaul for comments. Cover image, courtesy of meeting organisers and Ingrid Lohmann.

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The School will be a 4-day (23-26 June 2026) Theory&Computation course in a splendid Swedish inland Resort (2 hours away from Stockholm – our bus will bring you there at no additional cost from a nearby train station).

The first editions of the school were in 2022 and 2024—both a success (click here or here if you are curious).

REGISTER as soon as possible to secure your spot!

Key info:

– The teachers will be prominent international scientists, but also former participants who are now invited as teachers – you will learn from your peers via hands-on computational sessions. By participating this year, you will also be able to present your candidacy to become a teacher in the next edition!

– The event is designed to favor frequent interactions between PhD students/Postdocs with successful scientists in the field, in multiple meet-the-speaker sessions, and during free outdoor time, as the invited speakers are asked to be around and available throughout the school.

– The school will focus on key relevant topics at the interface between technology, biology, and computation, including how to integrate computationally and conceptually all the analytical modalities such as gene expression in single cell, epigenetics and 3D genome.

– The school will also include a flash course of scientific writing tailored for the field (this is a regular, highly appreciated part of the school).

-The school is sponsored by PALS (a merge of the two prestigious Knut of Alice Wallenberg Foundation & SciLifeLab).

Among many other, you will benefit from hands-on-computational sessions on:

– Single-cell multiome Data Integration & workflow management and reproducibility
– Combination of ATAC-seq and 3D-genomics
– Non-coding variants Prioritization & advanced Transcription Factor motif analysis
– Inferring Gene Regulatory Networks from large-scale epigenomics
– Visium HD Spatial Transcriptomics

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 How do circular RNAs (circRNAs) regulate Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) and biomechanical signalling that drives Kaposi sarcoma, and can targeting these pathways reveal new therapeutic strategies? This project will determine how circRNAs control viral persistence and mechanotransduction via Hippo pathway, revealing new targetable mechanisms linking infection, RNA regulation, and tumorigenesis.

Exciting PhD project seeking to address fundamental research questions with real translational potential. Interdisciplinary training across cancer biology, virology, RNA biology, and mechanobiology through the complementary expertise of the Hansen and Tagawa laboratories will be provided in a supportive research environment with excellent advanced equipment and technologies available. Clinical guidance will be provided by Dr Oswald. PPI activities will be integrated throughout. You will be part of the future Medicine PhD program.

Open for home fee (UK) candidates only. Deadline May 12th, please reach out if you have any questions.

https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/circular-rnas-linking-viral-infection-and-mechanotransduction-in-kaposi-sarcoma/?p195577

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Greetings to the Node community, 

My name is Andrea Murillo, and I am delighted to share that I am the new Community Manager for the Node. I started my research journey as a physiologist and later found my way into endocrinology during my PhD, where I worked with my favourite worm and developmental model species, Capitella teleta. Throughout my PhD, I investigated components of the estrogen signalling pathway across life stages of C. teleta. That is how the wonder of developmental biology first wormed its way into my heart.  

After finishing my PhD, I started working for The Company of Biologists as the Science Communications Officer. In that role, my passion for science communication grew, and my appreciation for biology deepened as I wrote about the Company’s fantastic journal content across many fields. But it was the science and the community surrounding the Node and Development that truly hooked me (I will stop with the worm puns now!). 

As Community Manager, I am excited to build on the great work done by Eva, Cat, Aidan, Helen and Joyce and to continue some of our users’ favourite series and features. In my previous role, I worked closely with both my predecessor, Joyce, and the two Community Managers from our sister sites: Reinier from preLights and Helen from FocalPlane. I am thrilled to be a part of the team as the Node Community Manager, a transition which they have generously supported. I’m planning to bring some of my own fresh ideas to the Node, and I hope you will like them.  

My first chance to meet some of you in person will be at the British Society for Developmental Biology 2026 Spring Meeting next week. If you are attending, please stop by and say hello. I am really excited to learn about your research and, most of all, to meet the people who make great developmental biology and stem cell research happen.  

Wormest regards, 

Andrea 

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[Editorial from Development’s latest issue.]

Preprints have become an indispensable part of our research ecosystem. Over the last 10 years, the biological community has witnessed an exponential growth in both submissions and readership of preprints. Arguably, the main drivers behind this growth are the ability of preprints to speed up the dissemination of research and broaden access to results long before formal publication.

Development and our not-for-profit publisher, The Company of Biologists, have a long history of actively supporting preprints (Prosée and Brown, 2025). In 2018, the Company launched preLights, a community-run platform that highlights noteworthy preprints across the biological sciences. Over time, preLights has evolved to provide support and training for early-career researchers to develop their writing skills for summarising and critiquing new work. In addition, Development’s own community site, the Node, posts monthly preprint lists from developmental biology and related fields. These lists are among the most-read posts on the Node, demonstrating the value of preprints within our community. Over time, preLights, the Node and Development have started working together more closely to highlight noteworthy preprints; a recent collaboration between preLights and the Node saw the introduction of curated preprint highlights in the form of ‘preLighters’ choice’ posts and a selection of preLights posts from the stem cell and developmental biology community feature in the journal as quarterly ‘Preprint Highlights’.

As part of this preprint ecosystem, Development launched its ‘In preprints’ series in early 2022 to bring curated, contextualised coverage of preprinted findings directly to our readership (Briscoe and Grewal, 2022). These articles are intended to complement other initiatives, such as preLights, in guiding readers to the preprints that matter the most in the field. We know that Development’s ‘In preprints’ articles receive, on average, over a thousand views within the first 12 months of publication and continue to be read in the years that follow. Development has now published around 60 ‘In preprints’ articles on topics ranging from single-cell lineage tracing techniques (Rodriguez-Fraticelli and Morris, 2022) to human stem cell-based embryo models (Moris and Sturmey, 2023) and Polycomb complexes (Iwasaki et al., 2023) to leaf-shape transitions (Byrne, 2024). You can browse all the ‘In preprints’ articles published to date in our dedicated subject collection.

Preprints featured in these articles have mainly been selected by Development’s in-house Reviews Editors. We are now expanding this initiative by appointing a small group of Preprint Editors – active researchers with their finger on the pulse of preprint literature – to commission and write ‘In preprints’ articles. This is an exciting opportunity to co-curate the preprint literature directly with members of the Development community, bringing specialist expertise and diverse perspectives to bear on an ever-growing body of work. We intend to appoint Preprint Editors who represent specialist topics within the broader scope of Development, and we hope that, as expert academics, they will be able to identify and highlight the best preprints from their fields as part of their routine exploration of the research literature.

We are currently accepting applications for Preprint Editors, and our call will close on Monday 30 March 2026. Applicants with at least 3 years of postdoctoral experience or principal investigators from any career stage are welcome to apply. In exchange for their contributions to the project, Preprint Editors will receive formal recognition and financial remuneration, including the option to receive support to attend relevant conferences. To find out more about this initiative, please visit our webpage: https://journals.biologists.com/dev/pages/preprint-editors.

We look forward to working with our first Preprint Editors following their appointment later this year to further strengthen our coverage of important preprinted work. We also anticipate that this programme will continue to evolve in response to community needs. This next step marks our commitment to supporting the reach of preprinted work and bringing curated, quality research to the attention of our community.

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Biology Open is proud to partner with the European Zebrafish Society (EZS) to offer travel grants for the 13th European Zebrafish Meeting (EZM2026) to be held 7-11 July 2026 in Vienna, Austria. This travel grant is designed to provide financial support for early-career researchers based in the Global South.

The aim is to strengthen links for future collaboration and enhance the researcher’s career opportunities, which is in line with The Company of Biologists’ core value of supporting biologists.

More information and an application form can be found on the EZS website.

Deadline to apply: 15 March 2026

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In February, we hear from three early-career researchers studying neural development. Chaired by one of Development’s first Pathway to Independence fellows, Polina Kameneva, Principal Investigator at St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI) in Vienna, Austria. Polina’s group uses 2D and 3D human stem cell models to recapitulate adrenal gland cell development to understand the onset of neuroblastoma.

Wednesday 25 February – 15:00 GMT/UTC

At the speakers’ discretion, the webinar will be recorded to view on demand. To see the other webinars scheduled in our series, and to catch up on previous talks, please visit: thenode.biologists.com/devpres

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As scientists, we are all are works in progress and continually developing in our own ways. Each of us brings unique strengths and skills along with challenges, and these can change during the course of our careers. Still, there are some common themes to what makes for an effective scientist, and these can provide useful benchmarks for evaluating our progress and planning the path ahead. This article on helpimascientist.com defines several stages of scientific development, with the intention to promote honest self reflection, open conversations, and aid in helping to set goals.

https://helpimascientist.com/2022/11/20/stages-of-scientific-development/ (4 votes)
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Here we showcase work from Craig Zuckerman, a digital fine artist whose work draws on scientific imagery to create immersive visual environments. With a background in medical illustration and animation, he now works at the intersection of science and fine art, using digital tools to explore form, light, and colour in ways that invite reflection and quiet attention.

Can you describe your artistic practice and how science informs it?

My work transforms cellular and subcellular structures into generative frameworks, moving beyond scientific description into poetic abstraction. Microscopy becomes a language for exploring form, colour, and spatial complexity. Each piece creates a tension between what is biologically recognisable and what is purely atmospheric.

I use scientific structures as scaffolding and use them for creating cinematic environments that resist literal interpretation. My digital work becomes a place to sculpt form, colour, and space with precision, constructing environments that feel immersive and contemplative. Microscopic systems are expanded into vast, navigable landscapes. This shift in scale invites viewers to inhabit the unseen, reframing the body’s interior as a place of wonder, serenity, and emotional resonance.

How do light, colour, and materiality function in your work?

Light functions as a structural force, creating depth and atmosphere. Colour becomes a psychological and emotional driver, guiding the viewer’s experience and transforming biological forms into meditative spaces. These environments invite contemplative gazing. They create a sense of inwardness, mirroring the quiet intelligence of living systems and offering viewers a space for reflection, grounding, and calm.

My limited edition prints on aluminium and plexiglass emphasise physicality, durability, and concreteness. Editioning becomes a conceptual gesture, establishing boundaries around reproducibility and reinforcing the singularity of each work.

Where does your inspiration come from, and how has it informed your artistic practice?

I am a digital fine artist whose work is inspired by science, with a background in medical illustration and animation. My practice marks a deliberate shift from applied science visualisation to autonomous fine art, using cellular structures as generative frameworks rather than clinical subjects.

Now working exclusively in the digital discipline, I construct immersive, cinematic environments in various 3D software that occupy the intersection of abstraction and representation. Colour, light, and composition function as primary structural elements, transforming microscopic systems into expansive spatial experiences. I now use science as a starting point to create biolandscapes.

I have always been influenced by prominent illustrators, from the golden age of illustration through the 1980s, as well as artists from the Renaissance, landscape artists, and sculptors. I continue to create more work in this space, constantly challenging myself with respect to technique, colour, composition, and scientific knowledge.

What advice would you give to others interested in your SciArt approach and where can they find more of your work?

To anyone who has interest in pursuing this approach, it is most important to grow as a visual artist — i.e. use of colour, composition, lighting, drawing and painting skills, or in the software of your choice.

More examples of my work can be found here:

• Website: https://cellularlandscapes.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craigzuckerman/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/czuckermanmedicalartist/

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