Too Creative for Science?

Have you ever wondered what it is like to grow up in a family of artists and then end up a scientist? What does thinking like an artist offer the scientist? Can the blending of art and science encourage a more diverse population of students to pursue science, and improve the public understanding of science? Ahna will give you an exciting glimpse into her life and how she has impacted science, education and the public with her two passions: science and art.

In this webinar you will learn, the benefit of the arts in science, particularly in the science classroom and its advantages with increasing public engagement.

Ahna Skop is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and an affiliate faculty member in Life Sciences Communication and the UW-Madison Arts Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She mentors both scientists and art students in her lab, and also serves on the board of the Wisconsin Science Museum, where many of her art-science collaborations are on display. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from the College of St. Benedicts and was named a Remarkable Women in Science from the AAAS. In 2015, she was honored as a Kavli Fellow from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2018, she was awarded the first ever Inclusive Excellence Award by the ASCB and HHMI. She currently serves as an advisor to the chief diversity officer at the NIH, and is a diversity consultant to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). In 2019, she was honored as one of 125 Women in STEM with an AAAS IF/THEN Ambassadorship. In 2020, she published a book with her two talented undergraduates called “Genetic Reflections: A Coloring Book”. Her science and art have been featured by Apple, The Scientist, USA Today, Smithsonian, PBS.org, NPR and Science magazine. She has recently started an online science art home décor store with her family called skopology.com. One of her great hobbies is cooking/baking (including scientific cakes!) and she manages a foodblogs, foodskop.com, and her AAAS IF/THEN funded labculturerecipes.com in her free time.