Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability

McCarthy, who majors in arts and humanities with a German minor,  works with PhD student Kelly Kapsar to devise a personal research project. She is reviewing the literature about whale-vessel collisions and the status of marine mammals in the Arctic. From here, we will begin to devise a feasible research question that has not yet been answered or addressed. 

Art and science influence each other greatly. Sustainability is becoming a frequent topic in the fashion industry, and solutions to textile issues are sometimes biological, such as using bacteria to dye fabric or growing faux leather from fungi. Artists are often influenced by scientific principles or use them to produce their work. Art can also be useful to science in the framework of thought it provides. Creativity is essential to progress within the scientific community, and sometimes solutions and findings seem surprising, much in the way that artists frequently pair seemingly unrelated items. Science in general is becoming more interdisciplinary, but CSIS and Dr. Liu’s lab especially incorporate a variety of fields and subject matters. In order to understand the full ramifications of actions within a system, one has to investigate a variety of potential impacts, such as economics, culture, ecology, and politics. It’s important to think creatively in order to think through these systems.