Designing Scientific Figures

The design of scientific figures is a key step that all researchers undertake as they present or publish their work, but one that they typically receive little training or education on how to do effectively. The Waterloo Electrochemical Society Student Chapter (WatECS) is delighted to invite you to attend a workshop on designing scientific figures, hosted by Felice Frankel. Felice is a science photographer and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an internationally recognized expert in scientific graphics, visualization, photography, and communication of scientific results to the public. More details on Felice’s work can be found on her website https://felicefrankel.com/

Felice has been holding these virtual workshops at MIT and around the world for some time now.  They are excellent opportunities for everyone to think in a new way about how they present their data to both scientific and lay audiences; and this process has feedback value as well, as thinking about how to explain a scientific result is the best avenue to clarify the result to oneself too, and obtain further insights and inspirations.

There are two levels of participation in this workshop. The first is for those who will commit to submit a draft figure for discussion. 10 participants/figures will be selected from those who apply and Felice will go through these figures in the workshop to suggest changes and improvements, giving first-hand feedback.  Selection will be based on those who submit first and those coming from different research groups. Priority will be given to WatECS members. Figures do not need to be in their final form – they should be drafts – and can take many forms, including schematics, images, or graphs. The ten first level participants will also win a copy of Felice’s latest book, Picturing Science and Engineering. The second level of participation is for those who want to simply observe the workshop. There will also be a raffle prize of five additional copies of Picturing Science and Engineering for participants observing the workshop.