Professor Leslie Atzmon's new anthology Design and Science (Bloomsbury 2023) addresses the inter-relationship, in both historical and contemporary contexts, between design thinking and design processes and scientific and medical research methods. Atzmon explains, "I had been thinking about doing a project on design and science for a long time. Before I studied design, I got an undergraduate degree in biology and spent several years working in a lab testing polluted water. The relationships between design and science are not obvious; most people consider design and science to be distinct fields that function in very different ways. Having experienced both worlds has given me a unique perspective on design and science together."

Design and Science features a critical introduction and sixteen historical and contemporary essays—in four themed sections—that consider various approaches to the relationships between design and science. The essays in the first section, "Visual Metaphor, Conceptualization, and Modeling Ideas in Design and Science," examine how both science and design use visual metaphor, visual thinking, and modeling to help unveil tacit processes and obscure concepts. Visual thinking, visual metaphor, and modeling in design and science can suggest the sorts of interrelationships that are discussed in the second section, which is devoted to biodesign and biomimicry. In the former, biological organisms are integrated with design in solutions to real-world issues, while in the latter design is inspired by living systems.

Most of the work that is presented in this volume, including biodesign and biomimicry projects, necessarily engages both makers and users. In the third section, "Maker and Users in Design and Science," the essays consider user-focused biodesign projects. Other essays in this section consider biodesign projects that are devised by "citizen scientists," non-scientists who collaborate with scientists. Finally, scientific data that is fashioned by design can reveal aspects of scientific systems to makers and users. In the fourth section, "Data Manifestation in Design and Science," the essays contend with the visualization and communication of scientific data. Data manifestation commonly utilizes "reverse engineering" or "reverse design"—in which a "picture" of real-world systems that are not yet well understood emerge from renditions of data sets.

Alumna Nicole Marroquin (BFA and BA, K-12 Art Education, 1999) will speak and exhibit her art at the University of Michigan this winter. Marroquin will give a talk, "With Care," in the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series at 5:30 pm on February 16 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. The Institute for the Humanities Gallery at the University of Michigan will host an exhibition of Marroquin's ceramics, printmaking, and installation art from February 16 to March 22.

Marroquin is a teacher, educator, and an artist whose work explores belonging and spatial justice through histories of student rebellions in Chicago Public Schools 1968-1980. Through research and creative practice, she aims to recover and re-present histories of Black and Brown youth and women’s leadership in the struggle for justice in Chicago. Recently she has presented projects at Printed Matter, the Annual Conference of the American Association of Research Librarians, the University of Maine, The New York Archivist Round Table, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, DePaul Museum of Art, and on WLPN, Lumpen Radio. Her essays are included in the Visual Art Research Journal, Counter-Signals, Chicago Social Practice History Series, Revista Contratiempo, Where the Future Came From, and Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements. She is a member of the Justseeds and the Chicago ACT collectives and chair of the Department of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The biggest Dance concert of the year at EMU, the Annual Faculty and Guest Artist Dance Concert will be held in Pease Auditorium on Friday, January 20 and Saturday, January 21 at 7:00 pm. The concerts feature choreography by EMU Faculty and distinguished guest choreographers performed by members of Company E, the official performing company of EMU Dance.

For more information, contact Prof. Sherry Wilkinson.

CAS's Civil Rights and Social Justice Center will present the second event in its three-part speakers’ series, "60 Years of Civil Rights: From the Church House to Social Media, the Struggle Continues," Wednesday, January 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the EMU Student Center (Ballroom B).

Leroy Clemons, community organizer and activist, will offer insights and lead discussion on the 1964 Ku Klux Klan murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Miss., supported with clips from the documentary film "Neshoba: The Price of Freedom." The murders went unpunished for 40 years until Clemons led a movement that resulted in the reopening of the investigation.

Schwerner and Goodman, both White New Yorkers, and Chaney, a Black Mississippi native, met as volunteers during "Freedom Summer," while working to register Black voters in the state. The three were chased, harassed, and shot to death by KKK members from the local community, a group that included the county sheriff, his deputy, and Edgar Ray Killen, a Baptist minister.