STEMM’ Engaging in a Creative Pursuit Can Stimulate Bold Ideas, Sharpen Your Focus and Foster Patience and Perseverance in Your Research

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Send your careers story Your Work to: naturecareerseditor story @nature.com STEPHANIE VETO/LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ART GALLERIES UNIVERSITY ART VETO/LEHIGH STEPHANIE Coral Forest, made from yarn by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles, California, illustrates the effect of climate change on corals. ART GRAFT: PUTTING AN ‘A’ INTO ‘STEMM’ Engaging in a creative pursuit can stimulate bold ideas, sharpen your focus and foster patience and perseverance in your research. By Amber Dance

eanette McLeod hid her interest in at lunch breaks and in the pub after work. arts, crafts and design. In effect, the acronym handicrafts for a long time. As a math- Her students were enthusiastic. “We ended STEMM (denoting science, technology, engi- ematician, she was sometimes the only up with 60 squares for this blanket,” recalls neering, maths and medicine) is gaining an A woman in the room, and she didn’t want McLeod. “It was huge.” Her secret was out for arts, making it STEAMM. to be seen doing something that could be and, by 2016, McLeod was well known in her But the benefits of integrating arts into the Jinterpreted as frivolous or frilly. department as a crafting mathematician; she scientific enterprise go beyond the classroom Then, in 2014, one of her colleagues at the enjoys sewing, knitting and crocheting, in and into academic careers. Although some University of Canterbury in New Zealand addition to studying graph theory. That year, researchers might just be interested in science, became pregnant. Along with another of the she founded the non-profit Maths Craft New others pursue varied interests such as crafts, department’s rare female mathematicians, Zealand to bring the joys of Möbius strips, theatre, languages and music. Those in the McLeod hatched a plan to produce a crocheted hyperbolic surfaces and other concepts to latter category say that, rather than detract- baby blanket. Rather than doing all the hooking the public through textile and paper crafts. ing from the science, these avocations help to themselves, they recruited the entire depart- It’s an idea that’s catching on: in 2018, the US build skills that translate into their day jobs. ment — mostly men who had not crocheted National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Sometimes, they say, the arts directly inspire before — to contribute individual squares. and Medicine recommended that education scientific questions. At other times, broader McLeod schooled her colleagues in crochet in these subjects include the humanities, hobbies provide an opportunity to practise

Work / Careers skills such as creativity, perseverance and dex- terity. That’s not to say that scientists should adopt some artistic hobby solely for the sake of those benefits, but researchers who like to crochet, write poetry or play jazz shouldn’t have to hide the time spent on those pursuits. Research by Robert Root-Bernstein, a biologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, backs up the concept. He’s found that the most successful scientists are more likely than others to have artistic or musical hobbies1. Compared with other researchers, proportionally more Nobel prizewinners and members of the US National Academies pursued interests such as arts, theatre, or creative writing2. And STEMM graduates of the Honors College at Michigan State Univer- sity were more likely to have licensed patents and founded companies if they also enjoyed arts or crafts3. Many such researchers tell Root-Bernstein that their hobbies directly affect their STEMM work. When they hit a wall in their day jobs, turning to something else can help them to relax, and suddenly a solution appears. “It’s a strategy for coming up with ideas,” he says. ISABEL ARAQUE AND JENNY ONATE/ASM JENNY AND ARAQUE ISABEL Creative endeavours Micro-Nature in a Spotted Eagle Ray, created by painting a mixture of yeasts on agar. Root-Bernstein says that during his upbring- ing, no one raised distinctions between arts Alex McBratney, a soil scientist at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo and sciences: his mother is a psychologist and University of Sydney, Australia, also finds that Park, California, he spent weeks trying to visu- artist, and his father was a computer program- his humanities interests feed his research, on alize the rapidly expanding Universe. “I ended mer and sculptor. So, he was in for a shock in occasion. He discovered poetry long before up having the wrong picture,” says Alexander, 1975 when he embarked on a PhD in the his- he discovered science; his most prized posses- “but that wrong picture led to a different direc- tory of science at Princeton University in New sion is a certificate that he earned for reciting tion.” Following the new path, he developed a Jersey. As he recalls, the university president poetry in primary school. model to explain why the Universe contains told incoming graduate students: “You must In a poem called ‘Engines of Resolution’, more matter than it does antimatter6. put on blinders and do nothing but one thing McBratney considered the nature of space Biophysicist Andrew Pelling isn’t afraid of for the rest of your life.” and time, writing that “cunning engines must bold ideas, either. His early education in the Researching his thesis on the origins of be constructed” to understand the concept. arts included singing and dancing in front of physical chemistry, Root-Bernstein found that Later, the poem inspired him to study how soil an audience. “You develop a thick skin from many successful scientists had not taken that varies over different spatial scales. that,” Pelling says. So, at the University of approach. The pioneering chemist and micro- “Good science is a creative process,” Ottawa, he pursues the research questions he’s biologist Louis Pasteur, for instance, studied McBratney says. “I don’t see it as being a fun- interested in, no matter what others think. His drawing when he was young, and kept an inter- damentally different creative process from group includes artists and designers alongside est in the arts throughout his scientific career. writing a great poem or a novel, or [creating] scientists and engineers. It’s been suggested that his artistic eye helped a piece of art.” The team once decided to use apple flesh, him to discover the chirality of molecules4. with the plant cells removed, as a scaffold on After his PhD, Root-Bernstein trained in biol- Courage to fail which to grow mammalian cells. “I cannot tell ogy, but he never abandoned his background Bravery, too, can be honed in the arts, says you how much vitriol and hate we experienced in history. As a scientist, he always goes back Stephon Alexander, a cosmologist at Brown for doing something this non-traditional,” to the very first paper published on a topic. He University in Providence, Rhode Island. He’s recalls Pelling. But he didn’t care — and the sometimes finds valuable information that’s been playing jazz saxophone since he was 11, experiments worked7. Now, he says, other missed by those who limit their literature moonlights in a jazz duo called God Particle labs have replicated the technique and are searches to recent years. and considered a career in music before decid- pursuing it, too. For example, when neuroscientists began ing that science was more stable. He has co-founded a company called to hunt for opioid receptors in the brain, they Improvisation is a key element of jazz, Spiderwort (named after a common plant in had a terrible time because opioids have so and if Alexander hits a wrong note, he has to apple orchards), to develop tissues on plant- many binding sites. Eventually, scientists suc- recover quickly and keep playing. He says that based scaffolds. The company is starting ceeded in identifying the receptors, and the this principle works in science, too. “In doing early-stage trials, hoping to repair injuries to field moved on. But Root-Bernstein wondered theoretical physics research, my practice and human soft tissues and the spinal cord. why opioids attached to so many parts of the my performance in improvisation allow me Sometimes, a researcher’s arts directly brain. That line of inquiry led him to discover to take bigger risks with ideas, and not be too influence their science. Bernard Tan at the cross-reactivity between opioids, epinephrine attached to the outcomes.” National University of Singapore started out and related compounds, and their receptors5. For example, while a postdoc at the SLAC as a semiconductor physicist. But he’d loved

music since childhood, had studied the piano — that metals cast too quickly would crack. different scientists following the same pro- and sung in choirs, and eventually taught him- Plus, she already had the skills to work with tocol can get different results, contributing to self to compose. As his career progressed, he various materials. While teaching undergrad- science’s reproducibility problem, says Roger gradually changed his science to match his uates, she found that although many had high Kneebone, who is also at Imperial. A physician hobby, studying acoustics and sound synthe- test scores, few knew how to use a hammer as and amateur harpsichordist, he fuses his inter- sis. “Music,” Tan notes, “is the most mathemat- she did. ests there as director of both the Centre for ical of the arts.” During her PhD, Laughlin went on to craft Engagement and Simulation Science and the Other benefits of musical training are less cubes out of different materials, creating an art Centre for Performance Science. direct, says social psychologist Chia-Jung Tsay exhibit as well as a ‘library’ in which students Could experience with crafts and the like at University College London, who studied the can examine the properties of these materi- help train scientists to perform lab tasks more piano in a pre-university programme at the als. She also investigated how different metals effectively? Kneebone and Spivey teamed up Juilliard School, a conservatoire in New York influence the sounds of tuning forks and the with chef Jozef Youssef to design an intro- City. The hours of practice required to reach tastes of spoons. “No one had looked at the ductory lab for chemistry students — in the a high standard accustom the brain to hard kitchen. Before they ever mix acids and bases, work and patience. Musicians are “very used “I don’t see science as being the students at Imperial make cheese; a soft to delayed gratification”, says Tsay, noting that chèvre is popular. They learn precision by such an outlook fits a scientific career in which a fundamentally different poaching eggs, where a half-degree difference publications and promotions come slowly. creative process from writing in temperature will change the results. Another benefit of practising and perform- a great poem or a novel.” The course began in late 2019, and early ing music is that it hones the ability to focus, surveys indicate that graduates of the cook- says Elaine Bearer, a neuroscientist at the Uni- ery course are indeed more confident in their versity of New Mexico in Albuquerque who is science of what metals tasted like before,” skills, says Spivey. also an accomplished composer. “When you’re says Laughlin. Copper and zinc were bitter, for It might seem that pure maths requires little doing music, you’re doing that one thing, and example, whereas gold was nearly tasteless, more than deep thought and a chalkboard, but you do it with your full brain,” says Bearer, who and these factors influenced the flavours of McLeod finds that crafts provide an unintim- plays several instruments. “And when you do foods eaten with those utensils. “I have never idating entry point. Maths Craft of New Zea- science that way, you do it really well.” tasted anything quite like mango sorbet with land’s first big event was a two-day festival at a gold spoon,” she says. the Auckland Museum in 2016. It drew more Good hands Science-based art can also be used to get than 1,800 visitors — the biggest crowd that Music and crafts also provide the opportunity a message across. In Los Angeles, California, the museum had ever hosted, says McLeod, to work with one’s hands. “You think differ- science educator and writer Margaret and a record that Maths Craft broke a year ently when you’re doing it, as opposed to when Wertheim, who studied physics and maths, later, when its festival attracted 3,400 people. you’re reading about it or writing about it,” co-founded the Institute for Figuring, a At the festivals, families work together to says Zoe Laughlin, a director of the Institute non-profit body that examines the aesthetic create origami polyhedrons. Or they exper- of Making, a cross-disciplinary club at Univer- dimensions of science, maths and engineer- iment with paper Möbius strips, or crochet sity College London. ing. Its projects include Crochet Coral Reef (see ruffled hyperbolic planes. Sooner or later, Crafting can also lead to a different under- go.nature.com/cr-coral), which aims to com- someone notices that there are no equations. standing of objects. When Laughlin began a municate the effect of climate change on corals That’s just McLeod’s point: “Maths is accessi- PhD in materials, after training in art, design and to illustrate hyperbolic space in biology. ble, and anybody can do it.” and textiles, she found that unlike some of Alan Spivey, a synthetic organic chemist In her own research, McLeod has begun her classmates, she understood materials at Imperial College London, notes that the to unite design and maths, investigating the intuitively. She knew, for example — even if students who excel at tests aren’t always the mathematical properties of the Greek key she lacked the vocabulary and equations to most skilful in the lab. Working with one’s design common on Mediterranean pottery. describe the process as an engineer would hands is crucial to most experiments. Yet Remarkably, she says, there are only seven ways to put that kind of pattern together. And now that her long-hidden love of crafting is out, an origami video from Maths Craft graces the research web page of the Univer- sity of Canterbury School of Mathematics and Statistics. McLeod’s secret, far from diminishing her scientific reputation, has only enhanced it.

Amber Dance is a freelance writer in Los Angeles, California.

1. Root-Bernstein, R. S., Bernstein, M. & Garnier, H. Creat. Res. J. 8, 115–137 (2010). 2. Root-Bernstein, R. et al. J. Psychol. Sci. Tech. 1, 51–63 (2008). 3. LaMore, R. et al. Econ. Dev. Q. 27, 221–229 (2013). 4. Gal, J. Nature Chem. 9, 604–605 (2017). 5. Root-Bernstein, R., Turke, M., Tiruttani Subhramanyam, U. K., Churchill, B. & Labahn, J. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 19, 272 (2018). 6. Alexander, S. H. S., Peskin, M. E. & Sheikh-Jabbari, M. M. COLIN ROWE COLIN Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 081301 (2006). Biophysicist Andrew Pelling repurposes old lab gear to make quick and creative prototypes. 7. Modulevsky, D. J., Lefebvre, C., Haase, K., Al-Rekabi, Z. & Pelling, A. E. PLoS ONE 9, e97835 (2014).

Correction The caption accompanying the image of the Coral Forest yarn sculpture in this Career Feature neglected to name the artists. The sculpture was made by Christine and Margaret Wertheim and the Institute for Figuring.