Electron wave function recolliding with CO2

• Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Jim Bergquist photo shoot (@ NIST)

Photo shoot with Jim Berquist who currently works at NIST, but he has also works with a lot of the scientist at JILA. The photo was used for an Alumni Profile article that Julie and I started adding to the JILA Light & Matter publications. Jim is really an interesting and friendly character, and I enjoyed taking pictures of him. I had the opportunity to tour Jim's lab at NIST. I love field trips, but the security at NIST is very tight. We had to be questioned and have my gear checked out before entering the facilities.

Quantum Logic Clock

Looks like I am clock animation guy because NIST came back to me to work on the Quantum Logic Clock. I was asked develop and create an animation that explains how Till Rosenband’s Quantum Logic Clock works. NIST wanted an animation that could be used for the news media that would be easily understood by the public.

This was a very important project both because of the attention the scientific community giving for atomic clocks and establishing stronger co-op on projects with NIST and JILA.

This was a very difficult project mainly because of the organization and the very difficult schedule that Till Rosenband had. I also had to coordinate with the NIST people in Maryland on this project. The inner workings of the clock was very complicated, and I had trouble having people who are actually involved explain to me how it works and what possible ways to visualize this clock. Animation with a lot of specific details is tough because there is only so much screen space to put things. Personally this is one my failed animations as far being simple, clear, and actually makes the concept tangible. Part of the problem was not getting the technical feedback, and having non-science people in charge with dictating visual techniques. The deadline was very quick too, so things had to be done basically the way NIST wanted to be done.

The sad part is that after a week of completing this animation, I designed or figured out an amazing way to re-sequence the animation to be 20 times more effective and clear and visually awesome. I might re-design this animation if I have time, but thats impossible since at JILA I am booked on projects for the next 2 years. !yea! This project did re-enforce one thing for me. Working with busy client(s) who request something without explaining what is actually desired (so its a game of mind reading).

The figures and animations are published on the NIST’s website.

• Clients: NIST, Till Rosenband


• Related Links: NIST press release news article, Laser Focus World

Strontium Atomic Clock

I was asked develop and create an animation that explains how Jun Ye’s strontium atomic clock works. NIST wanted an animation that could be used for the news media that would be easily understood by the public. NIST also asked me edit the press release footage. This was a very important project both because of the attention the scientific community that Jun Ye was getting for his research and establishing stronger co-op on projects with NIST and JILA. The figures and animations are published on the NIST’s website, Science Express, United States of America Department of Commerce website.

• Clients: NIST & Jun Ye Group
  


• Related Links: NIST news article, JILA Research Highlight article, Science Express article,Department of Commerce news story, The Futurist article, Science Centric article, Information Center for Basic Science
  

NIST & Jun Ye Atomic Clock press release

NIST (public affairs) asked me to edit the press release for Jun Ye's Sr Atomic Clock. This meant they would send me the interview footage from their Maryland office archives they already shot, and I would edit the footage with the new animation sequences I also creating. The press release can be viewed on the NIST website with captions.

• Clients: NIST, Jun Ye Group


• Related Links: NIST news press release

DNA Laser Trap Schemes

These are technical figures that involves double helix of DNA and laser trap schemes.

• Client: Tom Perkins Group

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

Imaging steps in an X-Ray microscope

Richard Sandberg came to me asking for assistance with this designing this image for a potential PNAS publication cover. He came to me about 2 days before the deadline of the cover submission, so I just worked up what he had put together and gave it more professional touch. This image is not really cover type material and I explained to Richard how these editors at PNAS select their cover images. It is very hard designing covers for the type of research at JILA because the concepts are very complex and most of research hasn't been effectively visualized (nothing like medical field).

• Clients: Richard Sandberg, Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups


• 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
  

Atomic Clocks Sync

I worked very closely with Jun Ye and Andrew Ludlow on this project. I really like working with Jun Ye because he lets me actually design a new perspective about how visually comprehend the subject. I stepped away from the more traditional design asethetics that you may see in Science magazine, and used colors and saturation levels to really make the illustration figure pretty distinctive. I wanted the image to be accessible to wide range of audiences such as the public to the international science communities. The image can be interpreted very technically with the details, but only when you really want to get into the details and break the image down to speceifics. Otherwise I still think the image is pretty clear with it over-all visual literacy that this how two very complex atomic clocks sync and relate to each other in Boulder.

This is illustration basically compares to two clocks (one at JILA and the other NIST) and how they relate to each. Essentially these two clocks are sync together or they are used to compare the times to help measure accuracy levels. The clocks are located in two different places in Boulder and they are connected to each via fiber optics cable that run underground. Basically this a compare n' contrast of two systems. Jun Ye wanted to use gears as metaphor for the system to describe the frequency comb spectrum. The arrangement and types of gears are actually very specific technically and in their arrangement in the figure. The JILA Research Highlight article explains this figure pretty well if you wanted more information

• Clients: Jun Ye Group, Dr. Andrew Ludlow


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NIST news article

Excitons confined in quantum wells

This image is excitons confined in two-dimensional quantum wells inside a semiconductor. I worked closely with Sam Carter. We started off with multiple tangents about how to visualize this subject matter. I was working originally with Adobe Illustrator, but the discussion about the visuals quickly migrated to 3D schemes. I recently got my copy of Maya, and I thought it might be good project to work in Maya. The dots/spheres are very specifically arranged (mathmatically spaced from Matlab data) which reflect density and potential energy levels of the excitons. I was just very excited about making Maya be very detail oriented with the data and objects. Maya crashed a ton of times due to the heavy nature of the spherical geometry, but I got (3D) wise and converted all the polygon geometry to particle data which seemed to help with the computer processing. I didn't have my work horse Mac Pro yet and I only had my PC which basically only has good amount of memory and a 3d gamers graphic card (which mean slow slow when it comes to processing rendering and even displaying)

• Clients: Sam Carter, Steve Cundiff Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Jun Ye Photo Shoot

I had the pleasure of taking Jun Ye's photograph in front of his newly completed next-generation atomic clock. His lab is jam pack with lasers and multiple experiments running almost 24/7. I had to come to his lab in the early morning when non his experiments were not booting up to do their routines just yet. I brought my lights, but it was very difficult since there wasn't that much physical room in his lab and there were not many outlet plugs. But I got a good setup and Jun Ye was doing very good with me when I he posed for me.

• Client: Jun Ye Group


• Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NIST news article

Rosalba Perna Photo Shoot

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Rosalba Perna was one of the astrophysicist I needed to photograph, so I went to her office with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

• Client: Rosalba Perna

Mathis Weber Photo Shoot

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Mathis Weber was one of the scientist I needed to photograph, so I went to his lab with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

• Client: Weber Research Group

X-ray Excitation

I worked very closely with Dr. Arvinder Sandhu and Etienne Gagnon on developing figures and cover art for Science Magazine. I had a week to develop a cover image using Maya as my 3D tool set.

My image was not selected for the front cover since Science magazine already used an attosecond science cover image in their previously issue. Apparently its Science’s political policy not to run similar subjects on their front covers consecutively. Even though it was not selected for the front cover image, it was printed on an inside page.

• Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups


• Related Links: JILA's Research ighlight article Air Force Print News Today Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Optical 2-D Fourier transform spectroscopy of semiconductors

This was my first 3D project at JILA. I worked closely with Tianhao Zhang who wanted a cover image to be used for PNAS magazine. He came to me with some 3D renderings from Matlab which were too basic and limiting. So we worked together in figuring out how to import 3D information based on data samples from Matlab into Autodesk Maya. Basically there isn’t any function in Matlab for this need and I couldn’t find anybody in the Matlab or Maya communities that had any solutions. So Tianhao and I develop a Matlab script that created/formatted .obj files based off the data points. It worked and I was able to make some very good high resolution renderings using Maya.

• Client: Steve Cundiff Group

EUV illustration and animation

I worked closely with Etienne Gagnon and Arvinder Sandhu who wanted an illustration and animation for their powerpoint presentation about using High-order Harmonics with Momentum Imaging Techniques to study atomic and molecular dynamics. They were basically presented their presentation internationally and need some really strong and clear visuals to supplement their talks.

This was one of my first laser schematics that I ever illustrated and also to animate as well. I used flash to make the animation, so that I could script in some controls for the presenters to utilize while they giving their talk (controls that let them start and stop and replay certain sections of the sequence again)

• Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups, Etienne Gagnon, Arvinder Sandhu