We are so proud to share the work of our second cohort. Check out our amazing teams, sneak peeks of their work and the science behind these amazing designs. From dark matter to designer antibiotics, we're using design to shine a light on breakthroughs happening in science.

This cohort exhibited at Transfer Co. Food Hall in Raleigh for the month of June. Have a look below in case you missed the fun.

Invisible Worlds brings the unseen into focus through illuminating science-based works of art. The exhibition unveils the results of a collaboration between NC State University scientists and designers and The Leading Strand. Our founder Amanda spent the semester as visiting faculty at NC State working with six groups of collaborators from NC State's College of Sciences and College of Design to create stunning visual and interactive designs that help the public

• step into the furry shoes of a little-known aye-aye lemur

• feel the intricate networks of soft condensed matter

• better understand optimized cancer therapy

• build and test synthetic antibiotics

• experience the mysteries of dark matter

• manipulate the speed of physical phenomena

Biologists: Lisa Paciulli with David Watts
Designers: Emil Polyak with Sarah Albright, Madison Brown, Ariana Ehuan, Nikki Knapp, Marcus Reefer, Madison Tart, and Stephen Waddell

How do aye-aye lemurs communicate and capture food?

In this piece, you will learn to find food as a mother aye-aye, a nocturnal primate native to the island of Madagascar. Using a stick, which simulates the bony middle finger of an aye-aye, you must tap the log to forage for tasty grubs. As you improve, the baby aye-aye vocalizations diminish, letting you know that you’re providing enough food. Be sure to tap quickly or your family’s meal will get away!

As dramatized in the science-fiction film Arrival, decoding the communication styles of other species is a frustrating but rewarding activity. Lemurs use vocalizations — barks, high-pitched shrieks, grunts, chirps, and other sounds — to alert fellow group members when predators are near, to warn competitors to stay away, or to communicate with other group members who might be far away in the forest. Although aye-aye lemurs (Daubentonia madagascariensis) have been at the Duke Lemur Center since 1987, their seven distinct vocalizations have not been well-studied for decades. Researchers are studying how aye-ayes respond to novel objects and humans vs familiar objects and humans, as well as the vocalizations of newborn aye-ayes. By understanding the circumstances that elicit different communications, we can gain new insight into how primates think and relate to one another.

Learn more: 

1. A review about aye-aye adaptations: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-0-387-34586-4_8

2. The aye-aye on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: iucnredlist.org/details/6302/0

3. Aye-Ayes at the Duke Lemur Center: lemur.duke.edu/discover/meet-the-lemurs/aye-aye/

Physicists: Karen Daniels with Estelle Berthier and Jonathan Kollmer
Designers: Sara Queen with John Durkee, Nikki Knapp, Joshua Putnam, Nick Rossitch, Brittany Siegert, Aubrey Sterling, Zhirui Wang, Shuang Wu, and Emily Zhang

What sorts of forces arise between individual particles in a pile of sand?

In this piece, you enter an environment that exposes the unpredictable patterns of force that act on grains of material like sand. The rings on the walls, ceiling, and floor represent packed grains, and the cadence of flashing white lights in a sea of color is initiated by the pull of tall elastic rods. Each component of the piece is designed to help the visitor better understand the intricacy of force networks and their beauty and complexity.

We’re familiar with force diagrams that represent simple situations - like a box on a slanted ramp. But what about more complex yet familiar situations like the sand on a beach, or cereal stuck in a box? If we could look underneath a beach, we would observe that each footstep transfers its forces downward through the points where the grains are in contact with each other. Tracing these paths reveals a tenuous network of connections between the grains. In our research, we study how the statistical properties of this force network provide an important control on how the bulk material behaves, from acoustical transmissions to particle slip and eventual flow.

Learn more:

1. About the Daniels Lab: danielslab.physics.ncsu.edu

2. Force networks + force chains demos: youtu.be/zkYTsn0xO2M, youtu.be/hQWLE7LmjSI

3. Making the invisible visible: scitationinfo.org/p/1XPS-4AJ/imgmethodsgranularphysics

Mathematician: Dávid Papp
Designers: Emil Polyak with Sarah Albright, Madison Brown, Ariana Ehuan, Nikki Knapp, Marcus Reefer, Madison Tart, and Stephen Waddell

How can we use radiation to destroy cancerous tumors
without affecting healthy tissue?

Step into this artistic simulation of radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer. As you interact with the piece, critical aspects of the radiation therapy process that rely on sophisticated mathematical optimization algorithms are unveiled. Use the console to direct radiation beams towards the metaphorical tumor using different angles and intensities to avoid damaging the healthy tissue in front of and behind it. This experience brings you face to face with the geometric optimization challenges of radiotherapy.

The key to treating cancer is to destroy as much of the tumor as possible while preserving the healthy tissue. Cut too little and the tumor grows back. Cut too much and wreak havoc on the patient. Recent biological insights and technological advancements are worked into the mathematical optimization models and algorithms for radiotherapy. Conversely, mathematical analysis can lead to medical improvements! For example, our math research has found that the benefit of radiotherapy can be substantially increased by using a continuously modulated radiation beam whose shape and intensity is changing as it is rotating around the patient (“arc therapy”); and designing multi-day treatments that treat different parts of the tumor on each day of the treatment (“spatiotemporal fractionation”).

Learn more:

1. About the Papp Lab: ncsu.edu/~dpapp/ 

2. Research blog: medicalphysicsweb.org/cws/article/research/70817

3. Video about fighting cancer with math: physicsworld.com/a/fighting-cancer-with-mathematics/

Chemists: Gavin Williams with Jessie Garcia, Rachael Hall, and Monique Reid
Designers: Lee Cherry and Patrick Fitzgerald with Stephen Waddell

How can we synthesize the tools to fight antibiotic resistant pathogens?

In this piece, you can join the fight against antibiotic resistant pathogens by designing synthetic antibiotics. Select the right functional groups and components parts and then test how well your creation fares inside the bio chamber.

Antibiotic resistant pathogens infect over 2 million people in the US every year and the CDC published a report in April 2018 documenting over 220 instances of germs with “unusual” antibiotic resistance inside the US. Researchers at the Williams Lab are developing a genes-to-molecules synthetic biology pipeline for the synthesis, diversification, and discovery of new-to-Nature molecules — using molecules from Nature as a platform for drug discovery. By studying how Nature constructs antibiotics and by learning how to reprogram Nature to make new versions of them, the Williams Lab is helping us defend against some of the most dangerous pathogens threatening humanity.

Learn more:

1. About the Williams Lab: williamslab.wordpress.ncsu.edu/

2. CDC's containment strategy for unusual antibiotic resistance: cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0403-antibiotic-resistant-germs.html

Physicist: Katie Mack
Designers: Tania Allen with Dylan Bryant, Justin Hill, Rhett Hissa, and Sarah Take

How can we detect dark matter and how is it distributed?

In this piece, you journey into the great expanses of space, as you walk through a narrowing hallway lit in mysterious ways. Despite its intangible nature, light is affected by gravity - bending towards dense clusters of mass. Our exhibit simulates the cosmic web and the gravitational lensing effect, illustrating how the distortion of light can reveal the presence of dark matter.

Beginning in the 1930s, scientists had noted that the motions of galaxies within galaxy clusters did not make sense unless there was a significant amount of unseen mass in addition to the visible stars. In the 70’s further evidence was uncovered to support this theory and today modern cosmology recognizes that dark matter, which is invisible and has not been directly observed, makes up about 80% of the matter in the Universe. One of the key detection methods is known as gravitational lensing, where dark matter’s gravity warps the shape of space itself, causing the light of distant galaxies to bend around it. Gravitational lensing allows us to map out the dark matter distributed in the Universe in a “cosmic web,” with dark matter coming together in clumps, sheets, and filaments.

Learn more:

1. The search for dark matter and its elusive secrets:
   slate.com/articles/health_and_science/mysteries_of_the_universe/2014/02/what_is_dark_matter_searching_with_gravity_lensing_wimps_and_antiparticles.html

2. What is gravitational lensing: cfhtlens.org/public/what-gravitational-lensing

3. What dark matter looks like?: earthsky.org/space/waterloo-image-dark-matter-cosmic-web-2017

Physicist: Alexander Kemper
Designers: Victoria Chi with Matt Babb, Trevor Berreth, and Julia Paret

What can we see when we slow down time?

In this piece, you become the master of time, slowing down the activity of 3 physical phenomena operating at different time scales. Using the handle, flip through the books and discover how a hummingbird’s wings allow it to fly (milliseconds), how sound waves are converted to light (picoseconds), and how electrons reacting to laser pulses (femtoseconds).

Much of our understanding of the universe has come from leveraging tools that allow us to see beyond the naked eye. Similarly, we have developed ways to observe matter at different time scales than ours, including the atomic and electronic scales -- much faster than we can observe directly. By using laser pulses to produce still images to visualize electrons and their complex dance, we may unlock the emergent properties driven by quantum mechanics in matter. The Kemper group studies the fundamental physics of interacting electrons and atoms at their characteristic ultrashort time scales by modeling and simulating their behavior on supercomputers. In collaboration with experimental groups that use ultrafast laser pulses to produce sequence of still images every quadrillionth of a second — visualizing atomic particles as they move inside matter — resulting in a better understanding of quantum physics and quantum matter.

Learn more:

1. About the Kemper Group: go.ncsu.edu/kemper-lab

2. Non-equilibrium physics explained: news.ncsu.edu/2017/04/kemper-5qs/

3. Physics in 4D: home.slac.stanford.edu/scales-of-time/#one_second

in partnership with

Brand Design: Victoria Chi with Eden Faulkner and Jessye Holmgren-Sidell

Production specialists: Jim Rains, Jim Dean, David Knight, Rob Watson, Charity Kirk, Mark Sidell, and Tih-Yuan Wang

Special thanks to: Mira Abed, Nate DeGraff, Monique Delage

Want to get involved with our third cohort in NYC? Or maybe you saw the exhibit and want to share what you loved about it or how we can improve. Shoot us a line. We'd love to hear from you!