Fostering interdisciplinary innovation

Christina is perhaps the most understated member to have joined our CPERL team to date. She was our first MS student intern from the UIC Biomedical Visualization program.

During her research internship, Christina was charged with developing a set of 23 illustrations that would correspond to items on the Young Children's Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM) and depict young children 0-5 years when engaged in activities. These illustrations will improve cognitive accessibility of a text-heavy PEM+ prototype that is undergoing usability testing now. Through an iterative weekly process, each illustration was made possible by Christina's expertise in visualization combined with the team's expertise in depicting diverse ways that infants, toddlers, and preschoolers engage in meaningful activities. Christina also earned formal acknowledgement for helping our team access a new body of literature to discuss results in the PEM+ formative study that was recently accepted for publication. As the team struggled with experimental failure in recent months, Christina's steady presence, quality contributions, and gorgeous illustrations inspired us to 'fail forward'.

We look forward to celebrating Christina soon as she defends her master's research, for which she recently won the international Mimics Innovation Award, First Prize for the Americas Region (Award amount: $3,500 Euros). Her research is titled "Visualizing Human Embryonic Development of the Heart's Outflow Tract" and will be presented on 9/7. We are very honored to have had the opportunity to work with Christina and wish her the very best as she pursues a rewarding and innovative interdisciplinary career.