Dissertation Research: Modeling Proteins, Making Scientists: Visual Cultures and Pedagogy in Structural Biology

这个科学与社会论文改进基金是一个关于结构生物学教学和培训的多地点人种学研究，旨在调查美国的科研机构如何培养一种新型的生命科学家一种与蛋白质分子的结构和功能相适应的生命科学家。生物学家、化学家、物理学家、工程师和计算机科学家都希望能深入了解生命的运作方式，因此他们都聚集在结构生物学领域。这些研究人员认识到，产生和解释蛋白质结构数据需要工艺技能和具体的知识形式，他们目前正在开发教学形式，旨在使这些隐性技能向学生明确。随着这一领域的迅速扩展和新的职业身份的形成，有必要密切关注结构生物学的研究和培训，在实验室和课堂上就地观察。NSF的资金将支持对处于科学生涯各个阶段的研究人员和学生进行访谈，对本科讲座课程和教学实验室进行人种学观察和视频分析，以及对研究生和博士后进行蛋白质可视化技术培训的实验室研究。这项研究将跟踪分子可视化艺术培训的新制度。通过以论文、文章和最终出书的形式传播，本研究的智力价值在于它对STS分析隐性知识的作用和科学实践中工作的多种推理模式作出了重大和创新的贡献；科学中视觉文化的历史和社会研究，阐明成像、建模和仿真传统之间的认识论差异；以及科学人类学中的方法，特别是通过关注科学可视化中的具体化和表演性。就其更广泛的影响而言，本研究的定位是直接为科学教育做出贡献，满足主要资助机构广泛认可的需求，即结构生物学等新兴领域的教学法、培训和指导需要不断修订和密切研究。通过与顶级教育工作者的合作，包括HHMI教授凯瑟琳·德伦南和麻省理工学院博物馆，本研究为改善剑桥和波士顿地区不同群体的K-12学生的本科教学和推广项目做出了直接贡献。这项研究也将直接有助于结构生物学社区内的辩论。随着不同学科的研究人员聚集在蛋白质可视化的任务上，这一分析将揭示跨学科训练的挑战，并使形成新兴交流和可视化惯例的隐性假设和推理模式可见。

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant is a multi-sited ethnographic study of pedagogy and training in structural biology that investigates how scientific research institutions in the US are breeding a new kind of life scientist one who is attuned to the structures and functions protein molecules. Lured by the promise of insights into how life works, biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers and computer scientists are converging on the field of structural biology. These researchers recognize that producing and interpreting protein structure data demands craft skills and embodied forms of knowing, and they are currently developing pedagogical forms that aim to make these tacit skills explicit to their students. As the field rapidly expands, and new professional identities are forged, there is a need for close ethnographic attention to research and training in structural biology, observed in situ in the laboratory and in the classroom. NSF funding will support interviews with researchers and students at all stages of their scientific careers, ethnographic observation and video analysis of undergraduate lecture courses and teaching laboratories, and laboratory studies of graduate student and postdoc training in protein visualization techniques. The study will track emerging regimes of training in the arts of molecular visualization. Through dissemination in the form of a dissertation, articles and eventually a book, the intellectual merit of this study lies in its significant and innovative contributions to STS analyses of the role of tacit knowledge, and the multiple modes of reasoning at work in scientific practice; historical and social studies of the visual cultures in science, illuminating epistemological differences between traditions of imaging, modeling and simulation; and methods in the anthropology of science, in particular, by attending to embodiment and performativity in scientific visualization. With regards to its broader impacts, this study is positioned to contribute directly to science education, meeting a need, widely recognized by major funding bodies, that pedagogy, training and mentorship in emergent fields, like structural biology, require constant revision and close study. Through collaborations with top educators, including HHMI Professor Catherine Drennan, and the MIT Museum, this study makes direct contributions to improving both undergraduate teaching and outreach programs for the diverse body of K-12 students in the Cambridge and Boston areas. The study will also contribute directly to debates within the structural biology community. As disciplinarily diverse researchers converge on the task of protein visualization, this analysis will shed light the challenges of interdisciplinary training and make visible the tacit assumptions and modes of reasoning shaping emerging conventions of communication and visualization.