Press
2022
I was interviewed for Science, Popular Science, and Texas Standard articles and a KWKT/ FOX44 television report about the Shaw Lab's innovative work to make science accessible.
3D-printed lithophanes can help optically impaired scientists “see” data. Elizabeth Shaw
Blind Scientists adapted a centuries-old art to make data that can be touched and seen
Using a tool called a lithophane, scientists unable to see can feel data...
A backlit lithophane showing a magnified butterfly scale. Jordan Koone and Bryan Shaw
How 3D printing could help blind researchers 'see' data
"You’re giving a form of sight to a whole bunch of people. It’s really cool to connect this old technology or artwork to the accessibility challenge," study author says...
A student at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired holds a 3D-printed model of an electron microscope image of a butterfly, feeling the shape with their fingers. Gabriel C. Pérez/Texas Standard.
Science ‘on their fingertips’: Texas professor making chemistry available to blind students
Taking a chemistry class typically involves using your eyesight – noticing color changes in a test tube, or making drawings to describe the structure of a molecule, for example...
2020
I was featured in Primitive: Tapping the Primal Drive That Powers the World's Most Successful People by Marco Greenberg, a Wall Street Journal Business Book Bestseller.
"They feel they must and should follow civilized conventions to get along and fit in. primitives, on the other hand refused to let the civilized world inculcate and mold them in its image. They tap into their most primal instincts and see the world differently than everyone else.
They tap into their most primal instincts and see the world differently than everyone else.
That said, one of the purest primitives I know can't see at all. 'I wish I could encourage you to major in English instead of chemistry,' one of Matthew Guberman-Pfeffer's professors at Fairfield University said to him, chemistry is a highly visual subject that requires an understanding of three dimensional spatial relationships. Matty was legally blind.
How could he peer through a microscope or understand molecular geometry? But then his professor smiled and finished her sentence, 'The problem is, you're too darn good at it.' The more civilized decision would have been to study English, a field in which accommodations for visually impaired students are widely available. Matty did not need to see in order to appreciate metaphor or to visualize a story.
But like a true oppositional primitive, he was stubborn. He didn't care that people with his disability weren't supposed to become chemists. He didn't ask permission. Chemistry was a new and exciting challenge. A dragon to be slayed. The thought of conquering it with his disability was "tantalizing."