you
in my views I was seen by the world and
the artists the dancers the vilest each
part form flowed into the other almost
indistinguishable in my head and he
became tried every thought emotion I'd
retained the performing arts taught me
quietly mustn't walk away time session
with my vitamins
taught me mental discipline and
precision and I also learnt how to find
expressiveness amid the straight
technique violin to dance dance taught
me practice patience and competition I
had to learn how to take care of myself
both physically and emotionally over my
decade of classical training I had the
opportunity to perform on world-renowned
stages and even on film sets it was a
fast-paced competitive life but every
second I spent on stage was exhilarating
but alongside the artist a second being
lived inside of me and she was curious
meticulous and fascinated by scientific
and mathematical principles that
explained and governed life my love for
science and reasoning was intimate play
a large part of my public persona but
everyday in grade school I would eagerly
await science class because each time I
discovered how much more I had left to
learn
I was eager to know what role I was
meant to inhabit I was inspired that
science could make me feel
infinitesimally small like a speck
floating in the abyss of the universe
and also a giant as I learned about
technologies on the nano scale
I thought about how for millennia
engineers have learned how to manipulate
the external environment to improve life
thrown in only in a recent sliver of
scientific history have we had the
knowledge and skills to engineer our
internal environment with an ambitious
goal improving the mechanism of life
itself
a Georgia Tech very few of my peers see
me as a dancer or a violinist
now I'm an archetype biomedical
engineering student obsessed with
research and planning to pursue a
graduate degree
coming to a technical school like
Georgia Tech I was scared that dance and
violin would have a diminished presence
in my life
and it's true I do spend a few hours at
the ballet bar or in a practice room
with my violin but strangely enough I
have started to notice elements of my
performing arts background where I
didn't expect to see them as in dance
research requires practice and patience
like in violin research man and a strict
technique and also creativity
even the biological nature of my work
has started to inspire me in an artistic
way from the orchestrated molecule
exchange in a cell signaling pathway to
the intricate dynamics of an entire
organism every system is uniquely
fine-tuned I've also had the chance to
play around with some fluorescence
microscopy and this has produced some of
them as colorful vivid vivid and
out-of-this-world images that I truly
started to see as art
and on the other end of the spectrum I
have started to experience science when
I perform there are no words to explain
the truly visceral and multi-dimensional
state of performance or my mind is
caught between musicality physicality
and character
I have to see thing with a physics lens
because I have to physically feel my
center of gravity I have to think about
torque in moments to find balance not to
consider friction turning
stuff to be aware of the geometries I
create both as an individual performer
and as a part of an ensemble and you can
imagine violin also requires some
scientific thinking beyond playing the
instrument in reading thick that
requires active counting thinking about
resonance and considering different
material qualities such as bow hair
rosin string types all which change
sound and do their parts to improve
performance
seeing the world through these lenses of
art and science is empowering but the
truth is integrating art and science is
not easy and seamless in fact in a place
like Georgia Tech where we have these
hierarchies and majors interests and
professions
thinking with an interdisciplinary
approach is especially difficult I have
felt this disconnect ever since I set
foot on this campus and I'm sure many of
you have as well so bear with me as we
do a little experiment if you have ever
performed on a stage playing an
instrument
taking a picture you're proud of or
simply doodle something in a class at
your board raise your hand
so we have so many artists here in this
room it's amazing and now if you have
been involved in academic research have
taken apart a pen and put it back
together or looked at something and
tried to figure out how it works raise
your hand
this artist scientist duality is present
in all of us but the majority of people
only capitalize on one of their personas
but what if we could learn to do both to
think in different ways and to expand
our imaginations
over the past summer at the unique
opportunity to partner with a non-profit
develop neural networks that learn the
style of street artists and create new
art in the form of murals
for me this was an exciting opportunity
to take skills I learned in my computing
and engineering classes to make art for
the public however I believe there's a
much more important reason that you and
I need to pay attention to the
relationship of art and science and it
lies in the fundamental need to
communicate science search is needless
if the results don't make it past the
bench
likewise if only a select group of
experts are capable of understanding or
even appreciating it that work loses a
magnitude of its power to impact people
but art is one of those forms of
communication which transcends languages
or formulas and our levels of education
so let's take a look at how art can
transform science
by an engineers from Caltech designed
this Mona Lisa out of DNA yeah you heard
right this is DNA to demonstrate a
powerful nucleotide self-assembly
mechanism based on a fractal algorithm
that path sentence was full of a lot of
jargon that maybe only a small niche of
engineers can understand but the
important thing is that these
researchers were able to make a
connection with every single one of you
in this room and millions more people
around the world and that is powerful
suddenly this work can be appreciated by
any person who's ever seen the Mona Lisa
and beyond helping communicate science
the performing arts can also be useful
in teaching science and engineering as
we all know education is typically
categorized into auditory visual reading
writing and last one is kinesthetic and
as an engineer and as the student I
actually can relate that we've had very
few in aesthetic experiences so mostly
I've had a lot of lectures maybe an
occasional lab or prototyping and while
some argue that those lab tries and
prototyping is a kinesthetic skill can
say otherwise kinesthetic learning
requires your body as a canvas it
requires movement and I believe that
musicans helped teach families such as
DNA replication for example can it can
expand this field to new learners I
believe this is important and while not
all of us may benefit from this type of
learning it does create accessibility
and more opportunities for students to
be engaged in this way
and so these examples are noteworthy and
important
but these examples are noteworthy and
important but the real way that we can
blend this line of art and science is by
a change in our collective consciousness
and this requires all of us not just
those who are classically trained as
musicians or performers or heart you
know and famous engineers require just
all of us to open our minds to new ideas
to appreciate the work that other people
are doing because as we've seen all of
us are artists and engineers so together
we can make science and engineering more
accessible inclusive and beautiful with
the help of art thank you
you