HAVE YOU SEEN SOMETHING INVISIBLE TODAY?
Dr. Anna Clemencia Guerrero, 2024
(Image: Katie Mast, SFI)
I am a James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. I am also an Academic Associate at Arizona State University where I help teach online history of medicine, bioethics, and biology & society.
I use my expertise in history and philosophy of science, microbiology, and scientific illustration to study the relationship between scientific pictures and knowledge. The pictures scientists make (drawings, photographs, photomicrographs, diagrams, computer simulations) represent a set of choices shaped by prior knowledge, cultural conventions, and the specific problems scientists are trying to solve. All scientific pictures are designed! I can tell you why scientists made the design choices they did, and how those choices constrain (not necessarily in a bad way!) future science.
By showing today’s scientists how their choices are constrained by past designs, and helping scientists make different and better decisions, I aim to hasten scientific progress.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Anna in the American Philosophical Society archives, 2022
(Image: Adrianna Link)
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A scientific image is any image scientists make. Researchers in many different disciplines care about scientific images, from philosophers to art historians to cultural anthropologists to artificial intelligence researchers. There are, unsurprisingly, lots of methods to study scientific images, depending on what you care to learn. I am developing quantitative methods for creating networks of images to learn how images and scientific concepts co-evolve. Learn more here!
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—I am developing open access research software that performs unsupervised image extraction on large corpora of PDFs that contain text and images. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Aaron Dinner at the University of Chicago and Dr. Julia Damerow at Arizona State University. Learn more here! And check out our project’s GitHub!
—I am writing about how researchers can use bibliometrics to complement traditional historical methods when studying the development of scientific concepts.
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In addition to research and teaching, I am a professional scientific illustrator. I have experience making and supervising scientific graphics for encyclopedias, textbooks, journal articles, research presentations, and museum exhibits. Check out my work!
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My Ph.D. dissertation traces the development of the microbial biofilm concept and its associated images from the late 17th century to 1974. Though many scientists believe research about microbial aggregates started in the late 20th century, microbiologists have been studying groups of microorganisms for hundreds of years. Please contact me for a copy of my dissertation.