No Bones

Intern Spreading the Animal Love

Hi! My name is Alex Makogon. Welcome to a part of the internet where you get to read about the incredible discoveries on our planet. For the next couple of months, I will be an intern with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to bring you “no-spine” chilling stories here on the No Bones Blog! With COVID-19 affecting everyone’s lives in so many different ways, I am truly honored to be able to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Allen Collins and the other specialists at the Smithsonian. This is an incredible opportunity, and I hope you enjoy what I have in store to share with all of you!

My love for animals has been with me since I was a child, and has only blossomed exponentially since then. My plans for my future have never been concrete, but I always knew that animals HAD to be in the picture. In high school, I was enrolled in the PLTW Biomedical Sciences Program where I learned the foundation of laboratory science and Biology. Taking that knowledge with me, I was able to have the amazing opportunity a few years ago to intern at a Veterinary Hospital in Gypsum, Colorado. After my internship, I moved on to work at another Veterinary Hospital, in Gaithersburg, Maryland to continue working in the veterinary field. However, this time, I was exposed to working with exotic animals as well (I even got to watch surgery on a goldfish!). Yet I knew that as much as I loved working as a veterinary assistant, it wasn’t the job for me. 

Me helping out in a vet's office.

Since then, I have developed a love for pisces, cetaceans, invertebrates and all! I have taken that love and centered it into my studies. I am currently a second year student at Coastal Carolina University, in South Carolina.Currently, I am working on a major in Marine Science with a minor in Psychology. I plan to take my knowledge after graduation to pursue a masters degree in Marine Mammalogy to be able to study my favorite animal… Beluga Whales! A fun fact about a Beluga’s bones is that their neck is so flexible due to the fact that their vertebrae aren’t fused together.

Me enjoying the underwater world!

This past March, before the pandemic hit, I had the amazing opportunity to become NAUI Scuba certified for both open water, as well as advanced diving. I plan to coordinate with my SCUBA instructor through my university to discover diving research opportunities over the next couple of years. 

Catching critters with a seining net.

If I could live under the sea I TOTALLY would! However, since that isn't possible (yet), I hope you can join me on this underwater adventure through the stories I begin to share, and amazing facts that will cross your mind. Hopefully the whole world will realize how much our ocean has to offer. So what are you waiting for? Let’s learn something!

By Alex Makogon, onTwitter: @AlexH2Ocean

Intern at the Intersection of Biology and Art

Hi! My name is Jenny and I’m a new intern working with Dr. Allen Collins and Dr. Karen Osborn! I’ll be making art pieces based on new research and cool things in the invertebrate zoology department here at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I am an incoming freshman at Stanford who is interested in the intersection between biology, art, and creative writing. I am so excited to learn from all the amazing scientists here as well as the new and exciting research happening here.  

“Rhizobia” is an installation combining a painting with suspended petri dishes of a root nodule.

I first got into biology and biology research after joining my school’s Science Olympiad and Science Bowl teams! I studied a lot of plant anatomy and physiology as well as some classifications in my free time. Over the summer, I did genetics research at UC Irvine under the COSMOS program and also conducted research with Dr. Alborz Bejnood on computational biology on skin cancer.

“Waltz of Interstellar Volvox” is an interactive piece set in both deep sea and deep space. Petri dishes spin and mimic the dancing movements of volvox.

My art is guided by exploration. I never know where each piece will take me. I create paradoxical worlds when I paint. I love integrating the microscopic scale with the macroscopic in a single painting. For example, combining blueberries with antibodies, dandelions with viruses, waffles with neurons - abstract approaches that build unfamiliar landscapes.

Another installation type painting with mops in the front, inspired by the bear’s head tooth fungus. The painting is inspired by deep sea coral.

Below are a couple more of my invertebrate-inspired pieces, including the first work done as part of this internship.

A painting of polychaete worms weaving into and out of a jellyfish membrane!!

 

Finally, this is my first painting done this summer, based on the beautiful new species of glass sponge, Advhena magnifica, that was discovered recently by IZ postdoc Cristiana Castello Branco and collaborators! Here I depict it morphing into its spicules.

By Jenny Shi