Suppression of Collisional Shifts in a Strongly Interacting Lattice Clock

This was my last official project at JILA before I decided to make my move to NYC. I worked closely with JILA Fellows Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey who asked me prepare a rendering for their paper they published in Science. The paper is centered around Jun Ye's Neutral Sr optical atomic clock where discovered tiny frequency shifts caused by colliding fermions. The collorbration with theorist Ana Maria Rey's group, Jun's group was able to solve the problem of colliding fermions, and reduced the inaccuracy of the optical atomic clock arising from atomic collisions (reaching the level of 1 x 10^-17).

I made a black verison and a white version for Science to choose between. My original renderings were then "replicated" for the NIST, CU ,and other press releases (currently without attribution with exception of Science). I used Maya for the 3D modeling and rendering where I used some costumed shader scripts for mental ray. The details of the project was changing at the time I was rendering, but luckily I prepared the Maya file to pretty flexible.

My project history with Jun Ye and his group has been extensive over the years, and I have thoroughly designing and creating for each new project which each have their visual/motion challenges and eccentricities. I was honored to have a opportunity to contribute to Jun's and Ana Maria's paper before I left Colorado to move to NYC, and I look forward to following the future progress of research coming out of JILA! While it was my last project I worked on in Colorado, I'm sure Ill probably work on a future project with some former connection or relation to science/research from JILA.

I am currently working on my own projects in NYC and working for The Wall Street Journal (doing IA/UX designing and ill post some of those projects sometime in the future), BUT I want to encourage anybody who has been following my blog or come across my blog (google analytics show a very wide international audience), feel free to email me anytime with any inquires/questions. I also encourage anybody to contact me about work opportunities and/or working colloboratively on projects that range in size of large to small (doesn't matter the field or area of research, education, or just to work on a strange idea). I work locally and remotely. I always have open mind and ear for anybody who wants to do something new and different : )

Science paper titled: Suppression of Collisional Shifts in a Strongly Interacting Lattice Clock. I worked on Figure 1C.

Full Science citation:
Matthew D. Swallows, Michael Bishof, Yige Lin, Sebastian Blatt, Michael J. Martin, Ana Maria Rey, and Jun Ye, Science Express, published online Feb. 3, 2001, DOI NO. 10.1126/science.1196442 (2011)

Be sure to check out the paper or check out the JILA and NIST press releases which explain research of the paper more broadly. You can read the research paper here: PDF . There are quite a few articles all over the internet from various science publishers as well.

Clients: Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey

Related Links: Science, NIST Press release, CU press release, JILA Research Highlight article

NIST - Annual Report (2008-2009)

Tom Perkins asked me to collect various images from my body of work at JILA and NIST from 2008-2009 to be used for the NIST Annual Report (view the PDF here). I submitted a whole library of my illustrations, figures, renderings, and photography for Tom to select from. Most of my work is in the Quantum Physics Division (Figures 1-8 pg 45-50). It is great honor to have a good amount of my work selected to be used for the Annual Review of Quantum Physics Division! The layout and design for previous years of the NIST Annual Report (Physics Laboratory) were pretty amateurishly designed, and I offered to assist with this year's design. Fortunately the people over at NIST hired another designer team to work solely on the print layout of the NIST Annual Report. The design is pretty safe and clean AND not terrible like previous years. I liked the colors they chose for cover which resemble my color schemes for lot of my body of work.

pg 46-47 Figures 3-4

pg 48-49 Figures 5-7

pg 50 Figure 8

Clients: NIST,Tom Perkins, Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, John Bohn, Ana Maria Rey, David Nesbitt, and Steven Cundiff

Related Links: NIST - Annual Report (2008-2009) [as a PDF]

Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules - Redux

So...... I decided to make new rendering of the Ultracold Polar Molecules. Nobody asked me to do it, but it has been something I wanted to do for a long a while. I made my first version rendering of the Ultracold Polar Molecules a while a back and it has since been used for a cover of "Science News" (check out my older posting) and NSF has adopted the image and made the image accessible to everyone (see posting). So the original image got a lot of attention, but I was never really really satisfied with the rendering. When I made the first version, I only had a day to do it. I originally wanted to do a multi-pass rendering using Maya and Mental Ray.

Then my chance came along and I secretly decided to redo this image the way I originally intended. Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, and John Bohn were continuing to make headway with their Ultracold Polar Molecules research and the JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 did a major feature article of their current progress on this research. The image made it to the cover of the JILA Light & Matter issue (which will be my last issued that I will be designing and producing). Its a good issue with a lot of good content and articles, and I encourage you to check it out.

Clients: Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, and John Bohn

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 issue

Cavity-Enhanced Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy

I worked close with Florian Adler from the Jun Ye Group. Florian requested a schematic of their experiment setup to help explain the process how the Jun Ye group performs tomography on a supersonic expansion. Florian explained he need the visual for Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry which will be officially printing their article "Cavity-Enhanced Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy: Technology and Applications" (early online review release available now) on June 15, 2010 as part of 2010 Vol 3.

I worked on this visual over the summer 2009. Florian explained to me what he wanted for the visual and he brought me physical pieces of hardware from his experimental apparatus that I could use to model from. I started with an old-fashion sketch up the scene that Florian and I discussed. After that I decided this was going to be an extensive Maya project since I could use previous models I already built and texture/rendering scripts that I made for other projects. I essentially modeled the whole scene from my sketch layout and used the physical pieces Florian gave me. I used Illustrator and Photoshop to incorporate the labels and composite the overall layout. I think it came out pretty well and everybody seemed pretty happy with the end results.

If you are interested in learning more about research that Jun Ye Group and other JILA groups a doing in this area, I would recommend you checking out the JILA Research Section; Molecular Fingerprinting and Control.

Clients: Jun Ye and Florian Adler

Related Links: Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry Article (early online review release)- Cavity-Enhanced Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy: Technology and Applications, JILA Research Section; Molecular Fingerprinting and Control

Visuals for "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within"

Michael Yarus (aka Mike) came to me about helping him create all the insert visuals for his new book "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within". The book is published by Harvard University Press and is now available on their website and on Amazon. Harvard University Press produced the cover visual (Ill find out who did that image once I get a copy of the book). The visual inserts that I rendered are below and I provided the B&W and colored versions together. The inserts for the book were printed in B&W.


Production notes:
After several meetings with Mike discussing the data and concepts for the visuals that to be included in the book as inserts, I had to do a bit of research finding the data and which visual scientific software I was going to use in my production workflow. I used PDB data file "2gis.pdb" for the model data which can be downloaded from the Protein Data Bank website. I was familiar with VMD (Visual Molecular Dynamics) software in past projects at JILA. I typically use VMD in coordination with Maya where I would use VMD to produce the models and then use Maya for its rendering environment. I like VMD, but I found its interface and functions to be difficult to use (it is an older piece of software). I heard about PyMol which is an open source molecular visualization system. I thought it might be a good software to use for this particular project because it has pretty sweet openGL rendering environment that I could use on Mac and PC computers. PyMol had better support and controls that I could use to create different visual representations of the data! I also discovered that it could render out some beautiful renderings without necessary having to port data model to Maya which help save me a lot of time in my work-flow (when compared to my work-flow with VMD and Maya). I still wanted to export the model data from PyMol and incorporate Maya, and PyMol made this much easier than VMD. I essentially export model data in PyMol by exporting it as VRML format (.wrl files) which I could then open in Maya. The hardest part about this project was learning how to use PyMol in a few days. I used Illustrator and Photoshop for layout and vector line work.

After completing the inserts and preparing them for print, there was some question about making a visual for the cover of the book. The editors at Harvard University Press had some plans already about creating the cover for the book and they did not really tell me about what they wanted to do for the cover. I am not sure who created the cover image or how the visual was created. I think it is an artist's conception of RNA. (ill find out which studio rendered that image eventually and update this posting) Regardless I wanted to attempt making a visual for the cover based on the data that was used for the inserts. I thought the possibility of using the data and visual that was already used for the inserts would help tie the book design together. The image below is my attempt. It is a multiple rendering of 2gis.pdb data file where you can see stick figure representation combined with the space filling representation. The rendering below was not published with the book, so it is for sale to anybody who wants to use it as a cover or visual for something. Just contact me. I still like this image and it has my art/design style. It is my interpretation of book title "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within" as rendered from data. I think the editors at Harvard University Press probably thought the visual was too scientific or technically complex to be used as a cover visual. They wanted a more main stream visual that would probably sell more books. I thought cover image they used was pretty eye catching and will probably help promote their book sales.This was a fun project and I wanted to thank Mike Yarus for letting me work with him on the visuals. I also want to give special thanks to Julie Fiore from JILA for her help with giving me a quick crash course with PyMol!

Clients: Dr. Michael Yarus

Related Links: Buy the book at Amazon OR buy it from Harvard University Press

Journal of Physical Chemistry A - front cover

My work is on the cover of "Journal of Physical Chemistry A" (April 1, 2010 Vol 114, Iss 12 Pgs 4017-4470) ! The featured article is "Vibrational Autodetachment−Intramolecular Vibrational Relaxation Translated into Electronic Motion" which starts on pg 4017–4030. I worked closely with JILA Fellow Mathias Weber with the data for the cover image. This is my first offical Journal of Physical Chemistry A cover.

Cover Description: "Vibrational excitation of CH stretches in nitromethane anions leads to vibrational autodetachment. The photoelectron spectra of autodetachment processes encode the underlying dynamics"

Mathias came to me August to talk to me about his research and potential cover for JPC-A. I wasn't familar with his current research, so I read his research paper to poured over his scientific poster that his group put together. Mathias explained his research findings and showed me his MOLDEN simulations. Once I understood his research and data visuals that I had access to, I had to figure out how visualize his research on JPC-A cover which essentially a perfect square area in the middle. Mathias and I chose visualize the research in 3 part story panel. This led me to format the layout in the square with 2 vertical columns (column 1 shows the molecule structure and column 2 show details enacted on the molecule structure) and sequence the story with 3 horizontal rows. Row 1 shows the molecule getting hit with hv(IR) laser that causes vibrational excitation. Row 2 details the vibrational excitation and the specific areas of the molecule that vibrate. Row 3 details the end result of vibrational autodetachment and how it compares to direct detachment (the 2D spectroscopy data). I was pretty happy with this design layout and I think it describes Mathias group's research pretty clearly and effectively.

Production Notes:
I started this project opening the data in a program called MOLDEN. MOLDEN allowed me to view the simulations/animations that Mathias had collected. Unfortunately MOLDEN's rendering environment was a bit dated and the quality I desired was going to be difficult with MOLDEN. So I switched to gOpenMole for modeling and rendering the data. I performed multilple layer renderings with gOpenMole of the molecule structure to allow me the most visual control. I then used Illustrator and Indesign for the layout. Mathis introduced me to a new piece of software called Image-J which has some really interesting functions (like the Interactive 3D surface plot). I am hoping to incorporate this imaging tool for various future projects. I am probably going to play around with this tool for some various creative experimental applications.

Clients: Mathias Weber

Related Links: The Journal of Physical Chemistry A - (April 1, 2010 Vol 114, Iss 12 Pgs 4017-4470), JILA Research Highlight article

Physics Today - front cover

My work is on the cover of "Physics Today" (March 2010 Vol 63, Iss 3, pp.8-80)! The featured article is " Universal insights from few-body land" which starts on pg 40 (check it out!). I worked closely with JILA Fellow Chris Greene with the data for the cover image and I used Seth Rittenhouse's POV-Ray data files. This is my first Physics Today cover.

cover caption: "The four cobralike forms here represent one view of a wavefunction for a collision between two weakly bound dimers composed of fermionic atoms. The calculations underlying the figure are at the forefront of theoretical work that explores universal properties in few-body systems—that is, features that are independent of the details of particle interactions. Chris Greene’s article, beginning on page 40, surveys universal physics in few-body systems, from a startling prediction offered in 1970 to recent theoretical and experimental advances."

Chris Greene came to me in October to talk to me about helping him make the cover image for submission to Physics Today. We discussed several ideas and processes, but there were some factors that I had work around. The main one was that I was already working several other projects for some other Fellows, the deadline for PT submission was soon, and Chris's project involved a lot of 3D work (which are never quick projects to do). Even though these factors were daunting at the beginning of the project, I was super excited about it. I never work with his 3D data before and I thought Chris's and Seth's original models were interesting representations of their research. The idea was just weird enough that I had to do it. It has Cobras!!? naturally im into it and I couldn't pass up this opportunity. (shout out to my GDC crew!!!)

The project started with Chris giving me the POV-Ray files and showing me what he was doing with them. You can check out the older renderings of the cobras here. The POV-Ray model data files were Seth Rittenhouse's. Seth was graduate student at JILA, but I didn't realize he finished his thesis and was now at Cambridge, MA when I emailed him about doing some data re-renderings. He mentioned that files I was working with took 1.5 weeks to process (pure continuous processing on a pretty fast computer cluster at JILA (i think)). So doing some re-processing of the given models wasn't going to work with the time frame that I was working in.

Production Notes:
I work with a lot different 3D environments and softwares, but I typically avoided using POV-Ray. POV-Ray (Persistence of Vision Raytracer) is a great open source command line driven render, but I would rather work in more robust 3D package like Maya that have some great standard renders and mentalRay (i typically like to render with MentalRay if i can). Don't get me wrong, you can definitely render some beautiful things with POV-Ray, but it takes a veteran 3D coder (the recent versions of POV-Ray have been really impressive since the last time I checked out POV-Ray in 2004.) Also POV-Ray is primarily a render and lacks other functions that a lot of other 3D software come standard with (part of the beauty and downfalls of POV-Ray). The work flow of POV-Ray immediate brought back memories of me coding/modeling with OpenGL environment back in 2004. At the beginning I was working with POV-Ray's script files and I was getting some good results (I was running it on both the PC and Mac environments), but the work flow was really tedious and not efficient use of time to master POV-Ray's rendering commands and work flow process. I needed a better work flow that could use POV-Ray files and that could make some great renderings with a lot of easy to change controls. So I decided I need to incorporate Maya in this work flow which meant I needed to export/convert the model data. So I spent a lot of time reading forums about other people trying this and it appears that its not the easiest thing to do (or that common with the Maya and POV-ray communities). There weren't a lot of scripts or programs that would do this well (and cheap as in free). I was checking this software called Moray (which is kinda of GUI interface for POV-Ray), but it didn't really have what I needed. Then I found this program called 3DWin. At first 3DWin didn't look that promising or if it did do it, it was going to make the model come out looking like garbage. But I was surprised and super excited that it converted the model data pretty well (i still had do some operations to it). Now I was able to work in Maya's 3D environment. Unfortunately it took a while to convert the files and a lot of the rendering techniques and processes I was planning on working on for this project was going to take too long. So the final rendering that PT selected is hybrid of mutliple renderings using POV-Ray and Maya. I am glad I was able to work pretty closely with POV-Ray and actually incorporate it my work flow process of making a pretty good rendering.

I want to thank for Seth and Chris for the original files and for letting me work on this project. The project deadlines originally took place in October, and after a few months of not hearing back from PT, I was little worried we wouldn't get our submission selected for the cover. Physics Today has a pretty wide circulation and some pretty amazing past cover imagery. Physics Today's covers are pretty competitive to get and I am really happy that Chris and Seth's research was selected as the cover feature.

Clients: Chris Greene and Seth Rittenhouse

Related Links: Physics Today - March 2010, JILA Research Highlight article

Measuring red blood cells elasticity

This was a project where I was 3D modeling (using Maya) a microfluidics device that was being used to measure the elasticity of red blood cells. This was for JILA Fellow Ralph Jimenez's group. I did version of this a few years ago (see posting titled "Mircofluidics Device"), so it was interesting to follow the updates/changes to this particular experimental apparatus and the applications it is being used for.

Client: Ralph Jimenez

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Monodromy

I worked with Fellow Heather Lewandowski on making this graphic for the JILA Research highlight and for the JILA AMO site. Heather's group did a series of experiments with the classical system of a pendulum on a spring which has monodromy. Monodromy is a term that has been applied in mathematics to systems that run around a singularity; however, there havn't been too many lab experiments involving monodromy. Heather's group decided to do several experiments in order to see if the systems tested had monodromy. I never heard of monodromy, but it was interesting learning how they were essentially doing these classical experiments which would help give them more insight into how other systems might also display these behaviors. The classical monodromy confirmed in the pendulum-on-a-spring experiment is analogous to the bending and stretching behavior of a CO₂ molecule.

I used Maya for this project because it was the easiest and quickest way to depict this classical experimental setup of monodromy (pretty easy to model the springs in Maya and I didn't want to draw it in Illustrator/Photoshop). In a three-dimensional spherical pendulum, for example, the singularity would correspond to the "straight up" position. However, pure bouncing motions around this position tend to be unstable. Because this instability is straight upward against gravity, any small deviation from purely vertical results in motion that could loop around the singularity. It is pretty interesting stuff and I recommend that you read the JILA Highlight article and article published in Physical Review Letters by Heather's Group to find more about the experiment and monodromy. Eventually I would like to take my Maya 3d file and really animate it. The motion is interesting in the context of monodromy. I hate "never having enough time" for the animating parts of these projects. There is always an endless list of new projects getting in the way (i need another me!).

They apparently used my JILA camera (Panasonic DVX100A) to record video data that they gathered from the experiments. I remember the camera being loaned out for several months (almost a year) which was fine because I wasn't using the camera for any immediate projects myself. I thought it was pretty cool that they were able to use the features/controls of that camera for their experiment. The DVX100A is a notorious camera (known for its low cost and pretty high quality) used widely in the indie film industry and various other productions. Now the JILA DVX100A has another checked "has been used for" use: a classical physics experiment camera.

Clients: Heather Lewandowski Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Atomic Force Microscope (AFM)

I worked closely with Fellow Tom Perkins, Gavin King, and Allison Churnside. I was initially rendering an image for the JILA Light & Matter Spring 2009 issue and then after I was done, talk of using the image for everything popped up. I was excited about the possibility of getting the cover of Nano Letters, but the publishers at Nano Letters said they already have all their cover images for the whole year or something along those lines. I found this to be kinda weird and was wondering how they actually run their publication. Do they know exactly what research to publish almost a full year in advance? Regardless Science picked up the image for their Editor's choice which was also pretty neat.

I have worked on Tom Perkin's stuff on past projects, so I was familiar with some of the visual and potential animation objectives. The intial meeting with Gavin and Tom was pretty quick. I decided I wanted to use Maya for this project because I knew I could make a pretty beautiful rendering pretty quickly AND I could make an animation from 3D file when I had the extra time. The shapes were pretty easy to model (and I already had some 2D illustrator line work that I did previously to use for the "revolve" procedure in Maya). I spent most of my time working on textures, lighting, and colors. I was pretty happy with my lighting. I hate texturing in Maya, but I was able to get the results I wanted pretty efficiently. Of course I am running Maya 8.5 which is two versions old now and no longer supported by Autodesk. So Maya crashed a multiple times during this project which caused me an extra 2 days worth of Maya time. I think I am going finally break down get Maya 2009 Unlimited because the problems I am experienceing will never get fixed unless I upgrade (UPGRAYED!). I didn't use Mental Ray render because it was artifacting some weird stuff in there and I didn't have time to debugg that (and I would have to redo all my textures also). Hopefully the newer verion of Maya will support my current hardware configuration and work well with the latest OS that I am running on both the Mac and PC systems. All n All the final results were pretty good and I was happy with it. I am glad Perkins Group liked results as well and that NIST picked up the image for their press release thing. Hopefully I will get around to the animation part of the project after I get back from my trip this April.

Clients: Tom Perkins Group

Related Links: Science (Volume 323, Number 5922, Issue of 27 March 2009), NIST Tech Beat, Bio Optics World,In Sciences, Nano Werk, Shanghi Institute of Ceramics Chinese Academy of Science (SICCAS), Thomas Net, R & D Magazine, News Wise, Materials Research Society (MRS), JILA Research Highlight article

Quantum Dots

I worked with David Nesbitt who explained to me how quantum dots worked and how his research involved quantum dots. I made a simulation/animation that shows what turns a quantum dot off and on, but I haven't had time to finish that part of the project yet. My main focus to was to finish the still graphic before the deadline for the print issue of JILA Light and Matter and for the website. I really didn't know much about quantum dots before David's explanation and his research. I did some background research and I found out that quantum dots are fairly popular and that there is a lot of excitement about finding out more about quantum dots and their applications. It seems like one of the main questions centered around quantum dots was their ability to turn off and on and how to predict this (and potentially control it). So I wanted to make the visual that explains some the mechanisms behind the turning off and on feature. Its actually a very complex process, so it was difficult trying to figure out a clean and accessible way of explaining the process visually.

I use Maya for this project because I wanted model the quantum dots structure which consisted of a interior of cadmium seleide (CdSe) and then surrounded by a shell of zinc sulfide (ZnS).

Client: David Nesbitt

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Chemcial Physics Letters - front cover

My art work is on the cover of "Chemical Physics Letters" (January 13, 2009 issue)! I worked closely with Mike Thorpe in designing the cover image. This is my first CPL cover, so I was pretty excited about doing it.

Mike showed me some his figures and graphics he worked on and we figured out a combination of elements that we wanted to emphasize. The covers of CPL tend to have a wide range of graphics that can be really just technical graphs and dense figures usually submitted by the researchers themselves. I thought this would be a good opportunity to make an awesome graphic with some simple schematic elegance. Yes, I understand the typical reader of CPL probably doesn't care whats on the cover nor about the accessibility of the information that could be gathered from the image. Regardless I wanted to make a graphic that visually worthy for a cover AND be able to be used by Jun Ye's group for whatever purpose (website, powerpoint, etc). Plus, I believe the visual front of someone's research should be well considered and accessible. I decide to make a really clean figure-like image of the experiment and showoff the actual end result data. The resulting image data is depicting the interactions of the C₂H₂.

Mike did me the great favor of letting me know of this cover project early on and made himself available to me. This gave me the time and feedback to design and create the graphic pretty efficiently. Also I was balancing several other projects at once, so it was nice to be able to plan for the project balance. I used Maya to model the C₂H₂ at different angles and to get the correct lighting on the molecules. I used Illustrator for the line work and then Photoshop to compile the image together and put on the finishing touches (lighting, texture, etc).

This is my fourth cover in the past few months. Covers are fun to design and produce, and I am happy that they are all different and focus on several of JILA's major research topics. My goal was to make all my covers different AND for different types of publications that range from main stream science magazines to hard science journals.

• Client: Mike Thorpe, Jun Ye Group


• Related Links: Chemical Physics Letters

Quantum Computing

Fellow Jun Ye came to talk to Julie about his "vacation" at Caltech where he worked with former JILA Fellow Peter Zoller on coming up with the basic theoretical framework for a quantum computer. I was asked to make a visual that explain's Ye's and Zoller's potential quantum computer. So I fashioned this graphic after doing some 3D Maya modelings that depicits how the optical lattic is used to cycle between various of combinations of the atoms and their spins. Read the article and look to future journal publications. I hope Jun Ye continues his quantum computing stuff, so I can make some awesome motion graphics for it. I already have some of the 3D modeling done. The visual got a little complex with the n-bit register formula thrown in there, but Jun Ye insisted that right type of people will know what that means. I think Jun Ye, wanted me to put that formula on the computer screen, so he can use it for powerpoint presentations.

• Clients: Jun Ye Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Science News front cover

My art work is on the cover of "Science News" (December 20, 2008 issue)! I think it turned out pretty good. I originally made the rendering to be submitted for the front cover of Science for Jun Ye's and Debbie Jin's article, but it unfortunately was not selected. Well I'm glad it was used for Science News cover instead. The article "Physicists Hot for Ultracold" by Laura Sanders is the article that Jun Ye was quoted in. I highly recommend you reading this article for those of you who are curious about whats up with Ultracold quantum physics AND don't usuaully read the hardcore science journal publications. Laura did a pretty good job writing article in terms that the mainstream public can understand.

I already posted a blog entry about the details of the image titled "Dense Gas of Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules"

• Client: NIST,Jun Ye Group, Debbie Jin Group, Kang-Kuen Ni


• Related Links: Science News article, NIST, JILA Research Highlight article, National Science Foundation Article, Research.gov Article, Joint Quantum Institute article, CU News Release article, e! Science News article, Science Daily article, EurekAlert article, PhysOrg news article, First Science News article

Science & Technology Review - N204 Cover Image

(published Science & Technology Review cover)

Dr. Wen Li sent me the cover of "Science & Technology Review" which is a Chinese scientific journal. I already posted a blog entry about the N₂O₄ titled "Science Cover and Figures - N₂O₄ Probed using High Harmonic Generation" so check out the details from there.

I don't know if I will be able to score a physical print version of the journal, but Im going to try. If anybody runs across one and doesn't want their copy, let me know.

• Client: Kapteyn and Murnane Group, Wen Li


• Related Links: Science article, PhysOrg News article, Information Center for Basic Science news article, Science & Technology Review (http://www.kjdb.org/cn/dqml.asp)

Science cover and figures - N2O4 Probed Using High Harmonic Generation

(published Science cover)

(published Science schematic and graph)

(mock up idea for Science cover)

(mock up idea for Science cover)

My art work is on the cover of "Science" (November 21, 2008 issue)! This is my first cover for Science, so I am pretty excited about it. I made several other potential Science covers within the past year, but they didn't get selected (i think they were pretty good one's too which you can find in this blog). Apparently it is a pretty competitive process to get a cover on Science. Anyways... now for the details:

I worked closely with Dr. Wen Li, Fellow Margaret Murnane, and Fellow Henry Kapteyn. I was originally just helping with the experimental schematic figure and the graph figure (the second image), and that expanded to coming up with cover images for Science. The schematic and graph figure was mainly done in Illustrator and I was mainly focusing on making the schematic pretty clear and clean looking so that two images could be group well each other. I am really happy how the schematic and graph figure images tie very closely to the cover imagery of the selected cover. The version in this blog is slightly different than the Science published version, but only a few of the colors were changed. The Science article and the caption text that was publish explains the schematic and graph figure pretty well if you are curious about it.

Covers: Why yes it was a pretty intensive process. It started out pretty simply with the schematic which was really just illustrating and arranging the objects in logical space. The real question next was how to describe the research concepts where the paper was titled "Time-Resolved Dynamics in N₂O₄ Probed Using High Harmonic Generation". This was a pretty daunting task, but Wen really worked with me and explained some of the core concepts to me. This whole project really turned out to be a really productive team play between me, Wen, Margaret, and Henry. It was the only way this project was really going to succeed. So it all started with Wen making his own sketch to show me some of his ideas. This helped me realize and focus on some of the key visual points for the rest of the project. I was really glad when I saw Wen come in with his own sketch. I usually encourage the people I am working with to sketch anything they can as part of the initial brain storming precess. Some researchers get shy about their drawing skills, but I keep telling them that it will help immensely no matter what they draw. So the brainstorming process went on for a while actually. I would make some mock and test renderings and we would get new ideas and I would try some new objectives. From the start I knew that I would be working in 3D environment, so I mainly used Maya and Photoshop for all the cover images. Working in a 3D environment paided off because it was much easier to make changes and create new variations in 3D package like Maya than if I were to draw/illustrate it.

to keep things short and sweet here, I will write briefly about each of the images in this blog.

The cover that was selected (top image), was showing the molecule N₂O₄ in two states where one is in an "excited" state (the one closes to front). I thought it would be a good idea to make the connection of these two different states of the N₂O₄ molecule to the actual data set of the High Harmonic Generation from the vibrating N₂O₄. Basically I wanted the viewer to be able to see where in the 3D space of the data that molecules were changing during the peaks of the data. The first step was to convert the data from Matlab to a 3d files that I could use to import into the Maya. I have done something similar to this before for PNAS figure and cover, so I passed Wen the matlab script to adapted to this his data. Wen converted the data from Matlab to a .OBJ file and I then imported it into Maya. The next step was to model the N₂O₄ molecules based on some information Wen provided me. It wasn't too bad to model in Maya (the excited state one was a little bit more complicated b/c the shapes were a little more atypical). After that I did a lot render tests for the lighting, colors, and textures. Then I used photoshop to add the final detail touches.

The other two images were mockups that we submitted to science as well. These images were basically showing the general and simple idea that the N₂O₄ molecules were being manipulated by several laser beams. They are both similar but one really emphaises how a few N₂O₄ molecules gets "trapped" in the laser beams amongst a cluster of N₂O₄ molecules. I thought these turned out pretty well and the main goal was to make a really simple visual concept that would work for a Science Cover. The main goal for all the covers was to show as much of the science as possible without overloading the viewer with too much technical jargon, arrows, and labels. We submitted all three of these as potential covers and the selected the top one because it showed the most science as directly related to the research. I was glad they picked that one because I was pretty attached to it myself. I liked all of them, but that is probably because I get personally attached to my 3D models and line work.

I really enjoyed working with Wen, Margaret, and Henry. I was also interacting with the art director and editors at Science via the phone for this project. They had some very postive comments about my work and efforts which made feel pretty good. I even blushed on the other end of the phone (good thing it wasn't a video conference or in person ha!). It feels good to finally get the cover and i am planning on trying to get few more Science covers in the future. Im hoping one of the Fellows at JILA discovers how to Time Travel. I bet I can make a bad ass cover for Science for that one.

• Client: Kapteyn and Murnane Group, Wen Li


• Related Links: Science article, PhysOrg News article, Information Center for Basic Science news article, Science & Technology Review (http://www.kjdb.org/cn/dqml.asp), Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences (SIMS) of the National Research Council news article, JILA Research Highlight article

CO2 Splash Collisions

I worked closely with Brad Perkins from the David Nesbitt Group. Well I actually started this project in December 2007, but my project queue was being overloaded with immediate deadlines from the Jun Ye group, Kapteyn Groups, and yes yes even NIST. So I put this project on pause for about 5 months which was fine because Brad's research was being embargo by the publishers forever (don't ask me why). The embargo was just lifted early this august 2008 which was just in time for the new JILA Light & Matter issue. blah blah this project took a while b/c of the dynamics and weird publishers holding onto the rights.

Here are the technical details behind this image. Ok so Brad has all this data (yea numbers and stuff) and put them into a computer program called "VMD (version 1.6.5)" which converts the data trajectories to visual simulation in 3D. This was great because he showed me what he rendered, but they didn't look that good and looked pretty blocky. VMD is open sourced and sometimes updated. Well VMD is not the easiest program to figure out how to get it render with better shapes and resolution, so I told brad that we should try to get the model in Maya and pull off some really good high res renders. Sounds simple, especially since I figured out how to get VMD to export the model as an .obj file. But NO! VMD DID create the .obj file but DIDN'T do it incorrectly (remember guys ....VMD is an open source program and support for it is not top notch), but I figured out to make a 3d file that could be brought into Blender (last ditch efforts) and then from Blender to Maya. Well this worked. I got it into Maya, but I couldn't do auto smooth on geometry to increase the shape qualities for 2 reasons: (1) the geometry was in triangles and not quads (Maya likes quads, but all these open source programs like putting their geometry in triangles ) (2) the whole object was one big mesh with intersecting parts going everywhere. I naturally cursed myself. Well i just recreated the whole thing in maya with better geometry using the original data points. It took too long (really a full weeks worth), but I got it finished, colored, and fixed up. phewwww all that work for regular to minor improvements. Well I had a week's worth of down time to dedicate to working in Maya. The good news is that I did get more familiar with using Maya's short cut key strokes and using Mac version of Maya. Sometimes I really do miss Maya and doing 3D projects and Sometimes I don't.

Brad made some simulations that I spliced together and put on the web and you should check them out on the JILA website (link below)

• Client: David Nesbitt Group, Brad Perkins


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Microfluidics Device

This was an interesting 3D project. I had to take a model that was created from data in a program called VMD that was then placed a 3D Program Blender and then convert to .obj file that Maya could read. Converting the .obj file to workable format in Maya took a while to get handle on, but it was worth it in the end. I got a pretty good rendering from Maya along with the control and adjustable-ity

• Clients: Ralph Jimenez Group, Emily Gibson


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Laser Atom Trap Graphs

This was quick 3D project that had to be done in Maya because illustrator couldn't handle the 3d components very well. This was a very quick project where I had only about a day to complete in all. I believe Jun Ye uses this figure for a journal paper and presentations. I forgot the scientific details of these graphs.

• Client: Jun Ye Group

DNA: Force Scale

The object of this image was to make a cover image that portrays tiny forces measurable via optical trap (atomic force microscopy). I worked with Tom Perkins who was doing research on the idea of using a double helix of DNA that acts as “spring” to measure the atomic forces. I imagined that best way to portray this scientific concept to a general audience was to design a compare and contrast metaphor to that of a traditional force spring scale that you would find in a physics class in a high school classroom.

I invited Jay Fittipaldi to work remotely with me on a few 3D components. He model the apple using Zbrush while I modeled and rendered everything else using Maya, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The team play with Jay helped me expand my experience with the Maya and Zbrush production pipeline.

• Client: Tom Perkins Group
  


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article