11 am - 12 pm EIC walkthrough (40 tickets available)

12 - 1 pm Panel (150 tickets available)

NASA invites you to 'Designing the Climate Story,' an insightful panel discussion that delves into the creative and scientific processes behind the Earth Information Center, a physical and virtual experience at NASA Headquarters where you can see how our planet is changing in areas that affect our lives and livelihoods.

This event features a diverse group of designers, scientists, and communicators who collaborated to transform complex climate data into captivating and educational installations.

Attendees will learn about the challenges and innovations involved in designing interactive displays that make climate science accessible and engaging.

NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/headquarters/

NASA Headquarters, in Washington, provides overall guidance and direction to the agency, under the leadership of the Administrator. Ten field centers and a variety of installations around the country conduct the day-to-day work in laboratories, on air fields, in wind tunnels, and in control rooms. Together, this skilled, diverse group of scientists, engineers, managers, and support personnel share the Vision, Mission, and Values that are NASA.

Speaker Details:
Jenny Mottar

Jenny Mottar serves as Art Director for NASA Science, working alongside senior leadership to design and implement the visual presence for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. She collaborates with scientists, engineers, and creative teams to translate complex ideas into visually appealing imagery for the public. During her two decades at NASA, she has developed branding for various missions, including Artemis and the James Webb Space Telescope. She is also the artist behind NASA’s Earth Day poster series, Science Calendar, and has created key art for various agency-level campaigns, anniversaries, and milestones. Ms. Mottar’s designs and illustrations have appeared on commercial products and apparel, in New York’s Time Square, television, websites, magazines, books, posters, exhibits, airports, museums and conferences around the world. Jenny is the recipient of two NASA Exceptional Public Service medals.

Lauren Katz

Lauren Telchin Katz is the Exhibits, Artifacts and Art Program Manager for NASA and is based in Washington, DC. Her role is to lead the agency in developing exhibition products and processes. She collaborates with organizations around the world to tell NASA’s stories through exhibitions, objects, and public works of art. She is passionate about storytelling and creating meaningful visitor experiences. Previously, she was the Senior Project Manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. She has been an adjunct professor in exhibition project management in the Museum Studies Master’s program at the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, of which she is also an alumna.

Nicole Ramberg-Pihl
Nicole is a freshwater ecologist with a broad background in Earth and environmental sciences. Currently she serves as the Project Manager for the Earth Information Center, leading implementation and execution of the center’s strategy, and has been serving as the Interim Project Manager for the US Greenhouse Gas Center Project Office at Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior to her current roles, she served as a Fellow for the NASA DEVELOP National Program at Goddard Space Flight Center. She has led teams and partnered with organizations across the globe to explore the use of NASA Earth observations to address local environmental concerns centered around water resources, ecological forecasting, disasters, and agriculture. Nicole has a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine. While completing her PhD, she was a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship (NSF IGERT) Fellow, which provided experience working on interdisciplinary teams to address complex environmental issues stemming from abrupt climate change. Specifically, her research examined how changes in climate and competition from smallmouth bass impact the performance of Federally Endangered juvenile Atlantic salmon in Maine streams. This experience highlighted the importance of approaching complex issues from a systems perspective and confirmed her passion for working on interdisciplinary projects relating to climate and the need to communicate scientific information to public audiences. Nicole has been on multiple teams that have received NASA Agency Honor Awards, the Excellence in Collaboration Award as part of NASA’s Honor Awards Appreciation Program, and most recently the Webby Awards.

Mark Subbarao

Mark SubbaRao leads NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio(SVS). The SVS tasked creates visualizations of NASA science results for public audiences. Mark has led the design and production of visualization content for NASA’s Earth Information Center. Before joining NASA, Mark spent 18 years at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where he produced planetarium shows and designed museum exhibits featuring data-driven scientific visualizations. During 2019-2020 Mark served as President of the International Planetarium Society (IPS), where he spearheaded the ‘Data to Dome’’ initiative - an effort to prepare the planetarium community for the big data era. Before that he worked at the University of Chicago where he was part of a team that created the largest 3D map of the Universe, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Mark SubbaRao has a PhD in Astrophysics from The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of over 100 scientific publications. Mark's visualizations have been widely featured in print, TV, and museums. His visualization work has been recognized with significant awards including the NSF's Vizzies, The International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, and the Deauville Green Awards. Asteroid 170009 Subbarao is named in recognition of Mark’s work on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Karina Taylor

Karina Taylor is a commercial product manager focused on delivering programmatic solutions to deep research problems. She currently serves as a product lead at Bloomberg Government, where her primary responsibility is devising ways to incorporate machine-learning solutions into legislative research workflows. Previously she has held roles across the wider Bloomberg Industry Group in product management, customer experience, and sales support for government contracting and international taxation. During her time as leader of the women’s affinity community she has moderated discussions on collaborative product development, allyship, and unconscious bias. She has held a deep love of space from a very young age.

Design Contiuum Fund

AIGA DC runs the Design Continuum Fund Scholarship, which provides scholarships for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students who are studying art and design disciplines in colleges and universities in the DC, Maryland and Virginia area. A portion of profit from DCDW 2024 will automatically be routed to this fund. You can see all future DCDW events at dcdesignweek.org and AIGA DC events at dc.aiga.org/upcoming-events.