Career Corner: Alternatives to Academia
By Maria Blumenkrantz
Before pursuing a career in scientific illustration, Dr. Beiriger earned her PhD in Dr. Victoria Prince’s lab at the University of Chicago, where she studied the development and migration of facial branchiomotor neurons through the zebrafish hindbrain. Even early in her scientific training, Dr. Beiriger found herself drawn to zebrafish not only because of their utility as a developmental model organism, but also for their unique visual nature. Her doctoral research focused on identifying environmental cues that guide neuronal migration, and through live imaging, microscopy, and tissue sectioning, she could observe developmental processes unfold in real time. Throughout graduate school, Dr. Beiriger developed an appreciation for both the science itself and the power of visualizing complex biological processes in ways that made them intuitive and compelling.
Because Dr. Beiriger was deeply passionate about her research, her shift away from the traditional academic path happened gradually. As she was exposed to different career options, Dr. Beiriger began to recognize that she valued flexibility and opportunities to support science beyond conducting experiments at the bench. She considered a range of non-academic careers, including science policy and medical writing, but over time she realized that the aspects of research she enjoyed most were those that blended scientific and artistic creativity. In the lab, she consistently gravitated toward meticulous and visually driven tasks, from optimizing microscopy techniques to designing custom 3D agar molds and developing new mounting procedures for imaging zebrafish.
A pivotal moment came when a postdoctoral fellow in the Prince Lab recognized Dr. Beiriger’s artistic talent and connected her with a professional medical illustrator. For the first time, Dr. Beiriger realized she could build a career that integrated her scientific training with her lifelong passion for art. She began designing artwork for review papers produced by the Prince Lab, an experience that revealed how much she enjoyed translating dense scientific concepts into visual narratives. As a result, rather than pursuing traditional academic postdoctoral positions after graduating, Dr. Beiriger enrolled in a Master’s degree in medical illustration. The program brought together students from vastly different backgrounds, ranging from fine arts to biomedical research, and provided formal training in scientific visualization. Over the next two years, Dr. Beiriger expanded her technical skillset through coursework in 3D modeling, animation, and molecular visualization, including rendering structures from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Combined with her PhD training, this additional degree positioned her to contribute to the field of scientific illustration from multiple perspectives – both as an artist and as a facilitator of complex visualization projects.
Today, one component of Dr. Beiriger’s career involves freelance work as a scientific illustrator, where she collaborates primarily with academic laboratories to create figures and graphical abstracts for publication. She also partners with scientific journals to design cover illustrations, projects that allow for greater artistic freedom while remaining grounded in science. Each project begins with conversations aimed at understanding not only the client’s research, but also the central scientific narrative they hope to communicate. Drawing on her own scientific training, Dr. Beiriger asks targeted questions to clarify the key concepts requiring visualization before moving into a cycle of developing preliminary sketches, refining compositions through client feedback, and final rendering of polished full-color illustrations.
Looking back on graduate school, Dr. Beiriger sees strong parallels between artistic work and life at the bench. She described the illustration process as highly collaborative and surprisingly like experimental science in its iterative nature. Dr. Beiriger noted that the same scientific curiosity and desire to tinker that once drove her work in the lab now shapes her approach to freelance illustration. At the same time, she emphasized that success in scientific illustration depends not only on artistic skill, but also on the ability to prioritize a client’s goals over personal creative preferences. For trainees interested in freelance illustration, Dr. Beiriger highlighted the importance of developing business skills and building an online portfolio that showcases both artistic ability and scientific understanding.
Alongside her freelance work, Dr. Beiriger serves as a project manager at Real Chemistry, where she combines her expertise in biomedical research, scientific communication, and illustration to coordinate multidisciplinary teams responsible for creating medically complex visualizations. Clients for these projects include major pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology startups seeking to communicate research and development (R&D) pipelines, mechanisms of action, and mechanisms of disease. In this role, Dr. Beiriger oversees projects from conception to completion, managing timelines and facilitating communication between teams of medical writers and artists. Many of the organizational and leadership skills she draws on were first cultivated during her PhD training. She often structures brainstorming sessions similarly to academic lab meetings, guiding teams through collaborative discussions to keep projects moving forward. Her position at Real Chemistry has also provided opportunities to engage with cutting-edge visualization technologies and contribute to projects that extend beyond traditional scientific illustration, such as building virtual reality applications and interactive installations for conferences.
For trainees interested in scientific illustration, Dr. Beiriger recommends intentionally pursuing opportunities to communicate science creatively, whether through figures, presentations, or visual abstracts. Building a portfolio early can help determine whether one’s work resonates with potential clients, while formal training programs in medical illustration can further strengthen both technical skills and professional networks. Most importantly, however, Dr. Beiriger encourages artistically inclined scientists to give themselves permission to invest time in their creative interests. For years, she viewed art as a hobby that existed separately from her scientific career. Only after intentionally prioritizing both did she begin to spend evenings and weekends in the art studio, developing her artistic abilities alongside her scientific expertise. Ultimately, Dr. Beiriger merged her two passions to build a career centered on visual storytelling – one that transforms complex scientific ideas into images that inform, engage, and inspire others.