Lipsa Panda
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world" said Albert Einstein. I seek for Imagination, an essential component in both science and art.
I am a respiratory biologist by training and have gained my Ph.D. from CSIR- Institute of genomics and integrative biology, Delhi. To accomplish my degree, I have helped in increasing the understanding of a molecular mechanism of steroid-resistant asthma. During my research training, I have mastered various mice and animal models of asthma. I studied the effect of dietary lipid metabolites on the sensitivity of asthma towards steroids and identified that while one metabolite was responsible for resistance, other increased sensitivity towards steroids.
I am an avid lover of art and I look out for opportunities to amalgamate science and art. I have no official training in arts but I am a self-trained and practiced artist. My interest lies in charcoal and pastel art but I am also inquisitive about digital art and animation. I also have an interest in making caricatures and animations about the biological processes and aspects of science.
This predisposition towards science and inclination towards art has given rise to my passion which is about interpreting and explaining science with creativity and ingenious artworks. Biology is nature and vice-versa, where one ends the other starts, this basic concept has piqued my interest. So, apart from creating art, my long-term goal is to make everyone understand science and bring awareness towards research through interesting and tangible means.
During my venture through science, I realized the importance of communicating science to people. I sorted out a lot of written literature into simple diagrams, to squeeze out the maximum essence out of it and making it easier to understand. I also understand that animation and visual aid for scientific concepts, make them interesting, easy to learn and grasp. hence, I am dedicated to creating animations to describe a scientific thought or phenomenon. Infographics, attractive yet informative, is also an emerging way of spreading socially relevant, important and essential messages in a crisp manner. I am training myself to fish out the important health information which can create awareness and help in constructing a better society. Apart from animations and infographics, a snapshot of a scientific process can be very well transformed into cartoons. This is a fun side of science and I am inclined and hopeful to create such pleasant scenarios.
I am a budding scientific communicator and I wish to showcase all the possible techniques to spread and popularize science.