visual media to advance science education,
communication, research, and understanding.”
Who are these illustrators? Where do
they come from? And, if we were to go on a
field expedition, where would we find one?
Most, it seems, find their way into the career
by accident. One of these is Birck Cox, a
freelance illustrator based in Philadelphia
who has been in the field for over 30 years.
While working in a Portland, OR hospital
as a computer programmer, he learned that
his boss was publishing a research paper and
needed illustrations. Though he didn’t have a
formal art background, Cox volunteered, and
after completing a sample illustration was told
that he should “do the rest of it.” Hooked, Cox
bought medical textbooks, took classes, and
eventually enrolled in a graduate illustration
program at the Medical College of Georgia.
Or take Kalliopi Monoyios, a Chicago-based
freelance illustrator. After getting a bachelor’s
degree in geology at Princeton, Monoyios
took a position as a lab technician in the lab of
Neil Shubin, a professor of organismal biology
and anatomy at the University of Chicago.
Originally hired to help prepare fossils,
Monoyios found that the work wasn’t what
she had expected. “It was hard on the body,”
she said, “and I learned that it wasn’t for me.”
Her interests leaned toward illustration, and
after she studied with another University of
Chicago science illustrator, Shubin let her start
providing illustrations for his work, including an
evolutionary biology book titled Your Inner Fish.
She hasn’t looked back.
What about the science illustrator’s typical
habitat? Besides their own homes—many
illustrators freelance—illustrators can be found
in universities, museums, and at both print
and online publications. Medical illustrators
work at universities, too, but also at hospitals,
and frequently are part of legal teams that
deal with medical malpractice. In general,
medical illustrators work “any place where
complex health and science concepts need to
be explained to the public,” says Tonya Hines,
the current president of the AMI. They also
sometime