NUI Galway recently unveiled a 36 foot (12 metres) long mural entitled The Scientific Wonders of the World.

The mural, which was painted in just one week as part of the NUI Galway Access Office’s Uni-4-U Summer Programme, saw 20 children, all aged 11, from the eastern suburbs of Galway city, many of whom hail from all different parts of the world, come together to paint.

The mural was part of the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science (NCBES) ‘Science Meets Art’ project to merge the two disciplines. The mural depicts a range of scientific images derived by scientists working in the laboratories at the NCBES. This work of art will be displayed on campus in the atrium of the NCBES.

The mural is the result of a community project which brought together different groups of people including scientists, art students, and local school children. The artwork was created by Kelsey Lind and Carolyn Morse, design art students from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, who have spent the past six weeks in the NCBES working on this unique art/science project. While at NUI Galway, the artists met with researchers to draw inspiration for their artwork and select a medium which would best depict the scientific images.

As part of the art project, the two art students set up a blog which outlines the work involved along with pictures of the kids painting the mural. For the next few days, we have been meeting with various scientists to see what type of research they did and what scientific images this research produced. First we met with Aideen who showed us her microscopy images of nuclear membranes and cells. She also showed us some interesting topographic-like images of steal and copper. Next we met with Andrew Flaus who works in the department of biochemistry at NUI, specializing in molecular structure. He had some awesome models and images of DNA strands and the green florescent protiens which allow certian things to be seen in images. He provided us with a video which talks about the Spindle, which is something thats studied a lot by Kevin Sullivan, who we met with next. Kevin is a cell biologist who studies how the sindle works and divides cells. We found all of the interviews very helpful because they allowed us to better understand the scope of the research which is happening on campus.

Written by brahmachary August 06, 2010