Melissa Pappas
Marine scientist, artist, and communicator
Melissa is currently a science writer for the University of Pennsylvania. Her passion for telling the story of research drives her art pieces and her love to collaborate with other SciArt communicators. Check out her blog post on how she uses art to communicate coral reef research.
Hana Kanee
Biologist, artist, graphic designer, UX designer
Hana is a trained plant and marine scientist whose scientific journey inspires her art journey and her passion for being a 'women in STEM' advocate. She creates both traditional paintings inspired by her Saudi nationality and graphic art inspired by science and popular culture. She also uses UX design to make science accessible.
Sofia Jane
Marine scientist, scientific illustrator, SciArt communicator
Sofia graduated with her masters from James Cook University where she studied the effects of boat noise on fish. She turned to art to communicate her research and now is a freelance artist creating logos and illustrations for other scientists.
Milly Caley
Biologist and artist
Milly is an artist and currently completing her last year in biology at UNSW. She uses both art and science to explore the world around her with many of her pieces focused in the marine realm. Art that she has created includes textile organisms that challenge the idea of species, and science communication zines about coral bleaching.
Shannon O'Riordan
Fluid artist
Shannon creates paintings inspired by the fluidity of life. By working with a medium that is unpredictable, she creates original works of art that cannot be duplicated.
Much of her work is inspired by nature and the ocean. Her work is defined by the process rather than the finished product.
Sophie Rhodes
Artist
Sophie is a UNSW Art and Design student who's work aims to disrupt the polarization between science and art by integrating plants and humans. She creates art in a research setting using scientific tools to direct her creative process. Some of her work includes linoleum prints, sketches, and a nature-inspired tarot card deck.
Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger
Environmental installation artist
Lea's art focuses on the impacts of tourism on small-island communities and environments. Her work speaks on plastic pollution, tying the issues that animals face to human emotion to inspire thought and action. Her art promotes thought on how humans are drastically changing the planet.
Sarah Jane Moore
Aboriginal Australian artist
Sarah Jane joins science and art with the Sydney Rock Oyster as her focus. She uses the shells of these indigenous organisms to show the cultural, artistic, environmental, and scientific importance of these mollusks. Her most recent work is accompanied by a song titled "I know where oysters lie"
Rachel Honnery
Artist, climate change activist
Rachel's work focuses on the intersection of art and science and how to use tools of each discipline to communicate environmental issues like climate change. She creates cyanotypes, traditional photographs of ice melting to depict glaciers melting due to global warming.
Eav Brennan
Scientist, SciArt communicator
Eav realized her love for science communication through the 3-minute thesis and marine debris research in her masters. She decided to switch her path to SciArt communication from science research and now works for Reverse Garbage and hosts a podcast called Climactic Collective.
Charlotte Page
Marine scientist, coral reef restoration researcher, artist
Charlotte is a PhD student at UNSW researching the effects of water flow on coral bleaching patterns and how to take advantage of biophysical factors that affect bleaching for restoration applications. She is also an traditional and graphic artist and frequently creates illustrative figures for her research.
Rosie Steinberg
Marine scientist, soft-coral restoration researcher
Rosie has just finished her PhD at UNSW researching the soft coral, Dendronephthya australis, home to adorable seahorses in Sydney. Her research looks at the threats and restoration implications of this species. Rosie is also a creative science communicator and former member of the Women in Maths and Sciences Championship Program at UNSW.
Jesse Bergman
Marine scientist, coral reef researcher, microbiologist
Jesse is a PhD candidate at UNSW studying the microbial partners in coral hosts as well as the process of tropicalization of reefs. Jesse is an advocate for scicomm and spends much of her time in the field, sharing her stories in real-time.
Tess Moriarty
Marine scientist, coral disease researcher, coral restoration advocate
Tess is a PhD candidate at UoN, but frequently finds herself on coral reefs in the field. Her work focuses on identifying and mapping coral disease outbreaks that increase due to climate change. Her work has sent her to Hawaii, Lord Howe Island, Vanuatu and Norfolk Island. She is an advocate for reducing global impacts by being eco-aware in every aspect of her life.
Gus Fordyce
Marine scientist, coral bioerosion researcher
Gus is a PhD candidate at UoN researching the erosion caused by microscopic algae that live inside the coral skeleton. These are different from the algae that provide coral its food. During marine heatwaves, the eroding algae can cause skeletons to breakdown and reefs to lose their structural integrity. Gus uses this research to tell the story of the microscopic processes that can damage coral reefs.
Steph Gardner
Marine scientist, tropicalization researcher
Steph is a Post-Doctoral fellow at UNSW assisting in large-scale projects on the interaction between coral and algae as well as conducting field work in various locations in the Pacific. She has also contributed to science communication events like Science week in Australia where she shares her research stories to the public.
Coulson Lantz
Marine scientist, coral-sediment researcher
Coulson has just completed his PhD from Southern Cross University where he focused on the bioerosion of coral cays like Heron Island. He works on many coral ecology and interaction projects at UNSW and has led outreach projects at the Sydney Institute for Marine Science.
Jason Baer
Molecular biologist, coral ecosystem restoration researcher, writer
Jason is a PhD candidate at SDSU, San Diego, California, where he researches novel methods to improve our ability to restore coral reefs by using "whole-ecosystem" approaches - ones that target crucial ecosystem processes in addition to corals themselves. He shares his passion for SciComm and SciArt through science writing through the lens of the human experience.
Sofia Fortunato
Marine scientist, artist, children's book author and publisher
Sofia is a trained marine science researcher with a PhD in evolutionary biology and publications on coral reefs in the GBR. She turned to her passion for arts and children's education and now runs a children's book publishing company called Little Red House Books.
Madi East
Marine scientist, photographer, and digital artist
Madi has just finished her second year as a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge where she studies the skeletal structures of corals. Her passion for using art to communicate science led her to digital art and photography that captures natures beauty.