Cover artist’s statement
Isabel Romero Calvo, PhD
Creating a scientific cover illustration opened the door to combine my two big passions: art and science. I was inspired by the mission of the “All of Us” program to create the largest national health database in the country, which will ultimately include a variety of data from a million diverse individuals. This data will have the potential to guide the development of personalized medicine for generations to come.The purpose of this cover was to communicate the implementation of this program throughout the greater Chicago area and all of Illinois, as a part of the national effort.
I started by designing the Chicago skyline with heatmap patterns to suggest graphical representations of vast databases that could be created by collecting information from numerous individuals from communities across the city. I added a stylized dendrogram under Lake Michigan to represent the interconnectedness, of “All of Us”. The ordered lines of the underwater dendrogram symbolize a unification of the heterogenous shapes and patterns of the buildings. Finally, I painted a sunrise that reflects through the water as a metaphor of the hope of this ordered information to benefit current and future generations.
About the Artist
Dr. Isabel Romero Calvo is a scientific illustrator working out of Chicago. Isabel grew up in the historic town of Granada, Spain. She earned her PhD from the Biochemistry Department of the University of Granada, before moving to the US for her postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago in the field of cancer biology. After her scientific training, Isabel decided to follow her passions for both art and science by combining these fields as a biomedical illustrator. She is currently completing her Master of Science degree in Biomedical Visualization at the University of Illinois at Chicago.