SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
Miller Lab - Photonic Biosensors
The Miller lab tasked me with animating a photonic biosensor which enables real time cellular analyte measurement.
The Challenge:
The working principle of the sensor contains a huge amount of physical phenomena, such as index of refraction, constructive and destructive interference, total internal reflection, and antibody-protein affinity to name a few.
Building complexity step by step and covering subsequent principles of physics was key to creating a cohesive visual piece that explained this novel measurement technique.
The Process:
We created a shot list and storyboard, and then got into animating. The key characters in this piece were the light paths, traveling around the ring resonators, and changing colors. Procedural systems were created for animating both the light power and color as a frequency sweep occurs as part of the sensing process. This allowed me to create simpler animation curves, and use drivers to dim certain elements based on a single input.
The Outcome:
The video has been used in talks and grant applications to fully complement data garnered from experiments.
“People came up to me and said this was the best science visualization video they’d ever seen. So….thanks again! I am thinking about additional videos we might ask you to do.”
