UGA projects spotlight strategies to integrate the arts into team research

The UGA Arts Collaborative helps support faculty and graduate students across the  Franklin College and the entire campus to advance interdisciplinary projects through engagement with the arts. UGA Research Communications spotlights the Arts Collaborative as a catalyst for creative research, the program launched a new, multi-year partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts:

Three UGA projects, all supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), spotlight distinct strategies to integrate the arts into team research, and also explore the Arts Collaborative’s role in growing new collaborations.

Each project tells a story—not only about its own topic, but about the importance of responding at a university to emerging research interests, offering accessible grants to arts-involved researchers that pair funding with practical support and mentorship, and providing space for creative teams to try their ideas.

...

Associate Professor Nadja Zeltner of the Center for Molecular Medicine and a team of artists and scientists are testing cross-disciplinary strategies in “Organoids,” a project that benefited from early engagement with the Arts Collaborative.

Organoids was supported by an Arts Collaborative Mini Grant, a student-driven program that invites and reviews proposals from interdisciplinary creative teams. Selected mini grant projects receive funding and mentorship from a cohort of Arts Collaborative graduate assistants, who help with organizing timelines, budgets, and public events to share research.

The Organoids group is composed of a growing cohort of researchers studying and engineering organoids—three-dimensional miniature versions of human organs (adrenal glands, in this case). Organoids facilitate understanding of human biology, cellular communication, and how our bodies fix themselves. The project’s mission is to make new discoveries: new organoids, as well as novel materials for scientific outreach.

Founding members Zeltner and Martijn van Wagtendonk (Lamar Dodd School of Art) see the project as a way for STEM and arts practitioners to experience each other’s spaces. From the outset, project partners toured studios and labs to witness different disciplinary environments, all while fostering curiosity about research methods and brainstorming possibilities for working together.

Continue reading...

Image: Professor Dave Gay and Associate Professor Moon Jang lead a math and design interest session. (Photo courtesy of Francis Oliver)