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Monash Sensory Science exhibition and books gain international recognition

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A creative and inclusive Monash University program to employ laboratory staff with disabilities and bring science to life for those with low vision has been highlighted in the journal Cell .

It is hoped that this publication will catalyse other researchers and institutions to be more inclusive in the workplace and in public engagement.

Monash Sensory Science began as a Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) internship program for people with disabilities and a one-off exhibition for blind and low-vision communities.

Supported by the ARC and Monash University, it has evolved into a national and international multisensory, accessible science initiative involving accessible employment, exhibitions and books championing inclusion in science communication.

The founder of this initiative and BDI researcher Professor Jamie Rossjohn reflected on the opportunities he’d received during his career and whether he would have had them if he had a disability.

“The answer to this question is likely no, because all too often, science is taught and communicated through the lens of able-bodied people to the exclusion of people with disabilities,” Professor Rossjohn said in the article .

“There was also the realisation that in the two decades of running a lab, we hadn’t included employees with diverse physical needs. People with disabilities face huge challenges in securing employment, and I realised that we are part of the problem.”

After contacting disability-focused employment agencies, Professor Rossjohn found some job seekers were prepared to work voluntarily as it was so rare to gain lab experience.

He designed an internship program around inclusion and equality, working with service providers to understand interns’ goals, and the university’s human resources requirements.

The program began in 2017 with three-month paid positions in administrative and technical lab roles. Wise Employment helped with adjustments such as assistive technologies, sign language interpreters and staff disability awareness training.

“One researcher is now undertaking a master’s of biomedical and health science at Monash, while another intern, concerned they couldn’t perform particular types of lab work, pivoted instead to computational biology and is now completing a PhD in genetics at our university,” Professor Rossjohn said.

A notable success story is Dr Erica Tandori, a legally blind artist who joined the team in 2018 via Vision Australia after completing a PhD.

Dr Tandori became legally blind at 23, due to a genetic condition called juvenile macular degeneration, and returned to university after raising her children to conduct art-based research. Among other things, she used oil paint and drawing to show what her condition looked like from a patient’s perspective.

At the BDI, Dr Tandori developed a tactile exhibition to bring the microscopic world of cells and microbes alive for the blind and vision impaired. She worked with lab scientists and others across the BDI to create large tactile posters with braille labels and large text, 3D models of immune cells, viruses, and proteins, and braille-inspired amino acid sculptures and handcrafted models.

The first Monash Sensory Science exhibition was held in 2018, and it has since incorporated an internship program for people with disabilities. “Most of all, I realised art has enormous potential in research and in communicating science and medicine,” Dr Tandori told Cell.

“I began using food, paper clay, and found objects to make sculptures of proteins, cells, viruses, and bacteria, articulating their surfaces with couscous, pasta, rice, seeds, leaves, clay, paper and other items. Trying to invoke connections and memories of familiar things when touched, I was instinctively beginning to develop a multisensory language that could assist blind and low-vision people to grasp more complex concepts in non-visual ways.”

More exhibitions followed, and multisensory, interactive science ‘exhibitions in a book’ for blind, low-vision and diverse-needs readers were developed with the help of Dr Stuart Favilla and Dr James Marshall from Swinburne University of Technology.

“We have also staged virtual exhibitions internationally and brought numerous small-scale outreach exhibitions to blind and low-vision people in community settings,” Dr Tandori said. “This has been a shared vision with my supervisor Jamie, a recognition we both have that science and immunology affect everyone and should be accessible to all.”

Adds Professor Rossjohn: “Witnessing the positive experiences of our interns has been heartwarming and immensely rewarding, and there is a recognition that the key to success lies in opportunities afforded to us in life.

“We hope our experiences can motivate other research labs and institutions to develop more inclusive workplaces, opportunities and educational programs for people with disability. This is where philanthropy could play a role in supporting such initiatives. The benefits are not a one-way street – diversity brings a richer, more tolerant and rewarding research environment and culture to all.”

Read the full paper in Cell, Advancing accessible science for low-vision and diverse-needs communities.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.05.020

Original article

Monash Sensory Science ‘Highly Commended’ Award – Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

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2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards Winners Announced

More innovative and creative designers from across Victoria have been celebrated for their achievements, with the Victorian Premier’s Design Award of the Year shining a light on the people who take Victoria’s design industry from strength to strength.

Minister for Creative Industries Colin Brooks today congratulated all the winners and finalists of the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, which showcase the best of Victorian innovation and design from the past 12 months – backed by the Allan Labor Government.

This year’s award was won by UNESCO World Heritage listed Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, with the tourism infrastructure project featuring a Visitor Information Centre, café and boardwalks that pays homage to the area’s history as one of the world’s most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems.

A weathered steel mesh pedestrian bridge with a black timber shelter spans a fast flowing Killara creek at Tyrendarra IPA.

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape –  2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Award of the Year

The design reflects the rich history of the Gunditjamara Traditional Owners who have worked and fished on the land for more than 30,000 years while the projects supports them to care for Country and share their stories with the growing number of visitors to the site which gained World Heritage status in 2019.

The project was commissioned by the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Corporation and was designed by Hamilton architectural firm Cooper Scaife Architects.

Founded in 1996, the Government’s annual awards celebrate design across eight categories – architectural, communication, digital, product, fashion, service, student and design strategy, with this year’s winners chosen from more than 330 entries.

Other winners include the CYBERTONGUE Food Testing System, a tool that analyses food samples in minutes, and a The Social Studio, Kay Abude and Alpha60 collaboration which uses off-cuts to create zero-waste bags and hats.

Swinburne University product design graduate Lily Geyle took home the Student Design category award for a post-operation recovery device for transgender people, while the Service Design winner was One Stop One Story, an online information hub where users tell their story before being connected to multiple corporate and community services.

The Design Strategy award went to the Fashion Futuring Toolkit which helps fashion designers and students learn ways to combat climate change, while design agency AKQA won the Digital Design award for its Nike campaign which used AI and machine learning to create a live virtual tennis match between two versions of Serena Williams.

Design is an economic powerhouse of Victoria’s $38.4 billion creative industries sector, employing almost 200 000 people and injecting $6 billion annually into the state economy.

View All Winners and Finalists

View Monash Sensory Science entry

 

 

 

 

Monash Sensory Science is a world-first, multisensory design strategy engaging one of Australia’s leading biomedicine institutes through multisensory design, co-creation, STEM exhibition and outreach for blind, low vision and diverse-needs communities. Leveraging the lived experience of a legally blind artist/designer, the program has empowered scientists to communicate cutting edge biomedical discovery through creative multisensory exhibitions for diverse needs audiences. Together with Swinburne University designers, Monash Sensory Science enables diverse engagement, through visual and tactile design, novel technologies, interactions and experiences, audio design and sonification and through multisensory science books. The initiative has achieved national and international recognition

Original article

Congrats Erica and the Monash Sensory Science team – Finalists in 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

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Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s inclusive science literacy initiative Monash Sensory Science has been named as a design strategy finalist in the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards. Established by the Victorian Government in 1996, the awards highlight and celebrate local design capability across architectural, communication, design strategy, digital, fashion, product, service and student categories.

Monash Sensory Science is a world-first, multisensory design strategy engaging one of Australia’s leading biomedicine institutes through multisensory design, co-creation, STEM exhibition and outreach for blind, low vision and diverse-needs communities. Established by the Rossjohn Laboratory and leveraging the lived experience of legally blind artist and designer Dr Erica Tandori, the program has empowered scientists to communicate cutting-edge biomedical discovery through creative multisensory exhibitions for diverse needs audiences. Together with Swinburne University designers, Monash Sensory Science enables diverse engagement through visual and tactile design, novel technologies, interactions and experiences, audio design and sonification, and multisensory science books. The initiative has achieved national and international recognition.

First held in 2018, the Monash Sensory Science Exhibition is one of their key design strategies. Designed for all ages and levels of science literacy, the exhibition explores science concepts such as immunity and immunology through multi-sensory, multi-modal artworks and tactile displays, offering an accessible and inclusive learning opportunity.

Dr Tandori said it was truly an honour and testament to the team’s collective dedication to be named as a finalist. “Our exhibition initiative, spearheaded by ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Jamie Rossjohn and developed collaboratively between Monash and Swinburne University, strives to break barriers in STEM and biomedical science communication, particularly for underrepresented audiences like those with blindness, low vision, and diverse needs,” she said. “Monash Sensory Science is a pioneering multisensory design strategy that has engaged scientists and individuals living with blindness and low vision to ensure inclusivity. With over 450,000 Australians experiencing blindness and low vision, our mission to make biomedicine accessible to all takes on a crucial role.”

“We hope that our approach becomes a global model, and my heartfelt thanks go to the incredible Rossjohn team and Swinburne designers for their hard work and dedication,” she said. “This recognition reinforces the importance of bridging gaps in understanding and making strides toward a more inclusive future in biomedical science communication.”

Read about the team’s entry: Design Strategy 2023 Finalists here.

Original article

Sophia reflects on her Rossjohn Laboratory Graduate Disability Internship experience

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Making science accessible to people with diverse needs is an important mission of the Rossjohn Laboratory in the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. The lab offers student scholarships and graduate internships to people with disabilities in order to broaden the diversity of people engaged in scientific discovery and to offer an inclusive opportunity to gain career experience in biomedical research.

Sophia Ladanyi recently completed her time in the lab’s Graduate Disability Internship Program and wrote some reflections about her experience.

Here’s what she had to say:

“I was offered an Internship as an Administrative Assistant in the Rossjohn Laboratory, working under the guidance and supervision of Project Manager Jennifer Huynh and artist-in-residence Dr Erica Tandori. From the beginning Jennifer and Erica made me feel welcome by helping me set up my computer and making me feel relaxed. I also felt comfortable and part of the lab team by getting to meet the Founder, Professor Jamie Rossjohn.

Rossjohn Laboratory interns Sean Christopher, Sophia Ladanyi, Rhiannon Thorneloe, Peter Knice.

Rossjohn Laboratory interns Sean Christopher, Sophia Ladanyi, Rhiannon Thorneloe, Peter Knice.

Erica and Jennifer had such a pleasant and endearing manner I felt at ease working with them. As for myself as someone with a disability, I was accommodated for by working set hours, 9am to 2.30pm on regular days, and having breaks from using my computer as needed.

My role as an assistant to the Artist in Residence was to take part in preparing for the recent Monash Sensory Science Exhibition – Autoimmunity. I learnt how science can meet art, especially for people with blindness and low vision. I made numerous artworks that represented human cells, such as white blood cells neutrophils and macrophages. It was great to see these artworks made into Sensory Science Books ready for the exhibition.

On the day of the exhibition, I showed guests to the main Auditorium area. One of the guests had a guide dog and a carer with her and showing them to the Auditorium made me feel like I was contributing to the exhibition in an important way.

I was honoured to have been filmed for the video of the exhibition. I was asked a series of questions where I talked about my experience as an intern and what I had learned from the exhibition. I highlighted how the artwork in the exhibition conveyed science in a new and exciting way.

I found it most inspiring, as someone with a disability, that one of the exhibition guests who was blind and also a current student at Monash University, has subsequently been offered an internship at the Rossjohn Lab.”

See Sophia in the Monash Sensory Science Exhibition video:

Read Erica’s piece in Hire up about our sensory science exhibitions this National Science Week

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Explore sensory science exhibitions this National Science Week

At 23, I was diagnosed with a form of juvenile macular dystrophy. This can be devastating for any young person, but as an art student beginning a degree at the Victorian College of the Arts, majoring in painting, it was particularly devastating.

I had spent so many years as a child learning to paint; I thought this was something I would continue to do throughout my life. However, the diagnosis brought all this to a crashing halt. A mere few millimetres of dead cells at the macula can have huge impact – no longer driving, reading, seeing faces, no longer able to see the finer details. A sense of freedom and carefree independence gone.

As my diagnosing ophthalmologist could not answer my questions – how quickly will my blindness progress? To what extent will I lose my vision? Will I lose my sight completely?, I became an observer of my own deteriorating vision, noting its myriad impacts in every aspect of life.

In the following years, after raising two children, I decided to return to art school with limited vision. And I realised that low vision (or legal blindness) is not very well understood. So, I decided to paint and draw what my vision loss looked like, and completed my PhD at the Victorian College of the Arts as an artist researcher, relaying an ‘eye witness account’ of the entoptic effects of my own vision loss.

For me, vision loss did not look like the big black spot at the centre of a perfect visual field, so often depicted in major ad campaigns promoting eye health, or ophthalmic textbooks and journals, as they try to explain what the person with macular disease might ‘see’.

A painting of a yellow and red Vegemite jar on a grey surface. The middle and right side of the jar is dissolving away into red, yellow and white flecks.

‘The Vegemite Jar’ – 2016 oil-on-canvas painting, by Erica Tandori

In contrast, I find my vision loss to be a dynamic and ever-changing form of blindness, its visual effects dependent upon environmental, physical, and psychological conditions. I don’t see a black spot at all. It’s just so much more complex than that.

The discoveries I made as an artist made me realise that, sometimes, even the most sophisticated medical and scientific equipment cannot capture the lived experience of disease or disability, and that art can contribute to medical and scientific research.

In that respect, my work as artist in residence at the Rossjohn lab, Biomedicine Discovery Institute, at Monash University, has pushed both my work as an artist, and my work as a blind creative researcher. Here, with the support of Professor Jamie Rossjohn, I create exhibitions for people with blindness and low vision, who wish to know more about biomedicine and biomedical research.

All too often, people with blindness and low vision don’t have access to the incredible wonders that are to be discovered through electron-microscopy and crystallography. These are discoveries that have made great science and won more Nobel prizes than any other field – discoveries that are celebrated in our culture, and yet remain inaccessible to those with visual impairments.

People with disability remain on the perimeter of scientific discourse, while at the same time Australian schools and tertiary institutions are witnessing a decline in the number of people undertaking STEM subjects, including biomedicine. 

This decline in STEM and the lack of access to science for people with vision impairment has been the driving inspiration behind Prof Jamie Rossjohn’s initiative to bring science to the blind and low vision communities.

As a result, the Monash Sensory Science initiative was born, with the first exhibition held in 2018. Since then, exhibitions have travelled across Australia and overseas, recognised by the United Nations Symposium (AI for Good), celebrated by Berlin Falling Walls (Breakthroughs in Science) and travelled virtually across the world.

Added to this, we also began a disability internship program, enabling people with an interest in biomedicine to work at our world leading research laboratory, giving them an opportunity not often available to those of us with disability. To date, we have enabled some of our interns to gain secure employment and enrolment into science higher degrees, including Master’s and PhD.

We have explored ways to make science accessible through tactile artworks, interactive science books, tactile posters, large font and braille labels, data projection mapping on sculptures, science inspired pop songs, and art-making workshops recorded in ASMR (auto sensorial meridian response) each seeking ways to make biomedicine novel, unique, inspiring and highly accessible to all.

But there is much, much more to do. We need a cultural shift, encouraging people from all walks of life and all abilities to be inspired to enjoy science, study it, work in its areas of research and celebrate its discoveries. And we need the wider community to accept and support this shift and the benefits this will bring.

I do believe Monash Sensory Science is a wonderful initiative, for it draws together scientists and researchers, people from all walks of life, inclusive of diverse needs, science literacies and divergent backgrounds to celebrate the wonders of biomedicine. It is a story about all of us, for all of us.

Monash Sensory Science will celebrate National Science Week with two free exhibitions travelling to both Melbourne and Sydney in August 2023.

In Sydney, Monash Sensory Science will partner with NextSense, a premier agency supporting children with hearing and vision loss, to host an event at the Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University, on Tuesday 15 August from 12 – 4 pm.

Register here

In Melbourne, the exhibition will be hosted by Statewide Vision Resources, the Victorian Education Department’s peak body providing support to school age children with blindness and vision impairment and their teachers. This exhibition will be held on Thursday 17 August 2023, from 2 – 5 pm.

Register here

These exhibitions will also include workshops, where participants living with blindness, low vision or diverse needs, can create science inspired artworks. Items produced in the workshops will be included in future exhibitions and new interactive science books. All workshop materials will be provided free by the organisers. The exhibitions are free, light refreshments are also provided. Bookings are essential as places are limited.

A Monash Sensory Science pull-banner in front of an entrance to a Monash University building. Two women with dark black hair wearing puffer jackets are walking towards the doorway.

Erica is smiling. She has brown eyes, shoulder length brown hair and is wearing a black v-neck top.

Dr Erica Tandori PhD, is a legally-blind artist, academic and public speaker. Since being diagnosed with a form of macular dystrophy, a degenerative form of vision-loss, in her first year of art school, Erica has devoted her art making and research to an examination of what it means to experience living with vision loss.

Original article