Cells to Self: Research Projects

Cells to Self is a multiyear initiative encompassing four projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Each project not only develops new experiences for museum visitors, but also evaluates the effectiveness of prototype exhibits to better understand how visitors engage with and learn at these exhibits.

Center for Cellular Construction

The Center will learn how to engineer the physical structures and interactions of living cells. The Exploratorium's role is to engage the public with cellular engineering research through exhibits and

Visitor Interactions in Microbiology

This project develops exhibits that let visitors interact in real time with living microbes, through visitor drawings or silhouettes projected in light onto a microscope slide.

A person in a purple jacket interacting with a large touchscreen display, which appears to be showing some kind of visual or scientific information.

Seeing Scientifically

This project studied how to encourage and support visitors in observing as scientists do when looking at life through a microscope.

Living Liquid

The goal of Living Liquid was to discover ways to design exhibits that allow visitors to explore and ask questions about scientific data sets, through interactive data visualizations about marine life

Cells to Self is a multiyear initiative encompassing both exhibit development and museum visitor research projects. Cells to Self is made possible through the generous support of the Troy and Leslie Daniels Fund for Life Sciences and from Genentech, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants 1514612, 1612831, 1322828, and 1548297. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Additional support for the Microscope Imaging Station was generously provided by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation and the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health under multiple Science Education Partnership Awards. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.