Instructors:

Jenna M. McCullough, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County & UCLA

Devon A. DeRaad, UCLA

Emily V. Griffith, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

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Target Audience: The morning session is targeted for participants with little to no experience with R and Rstudio, such as undergraduate to early stage PhD students. The afternoon session would be of interest to all levels of attendees who are interested in improving their scientific graphics, from undergraduates to professors.

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Effective scientific graphics are essential for clearly communicating results, highlighting key patterns, and increasing the impact and accessibility of research. Well-designed graphics strengthen manuscripts and grant proposals, enhance conference presentations, and help communicate research findings to broader and more diverse audiences. 

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The morning session focuses on building foundational R skills for participants with little to no prior experience. Led by Devon, with support from Jenna and Emily, this session will cover installing and loading R packages, using R projects and Quarto documents, and straightforward data visualization using ColorBrewer palettes and ggplot2, to export publication-ready PDF figures.

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The afternoon session begins with an overview of principles for creating clear, engaging, and accessible scientific graphics. Topics include the basics of color theory and composition, strategies for improving accessibility and readability, and how to leverage open-source graphics and images. Following this overview, participants will split into two hands-on groups based on their preferred software: Adobe Illustrator, a subscription-based platform often available through institutional licenses (led by Jenna), and Graphite, a free and open-access vector-based editing software (led by Emily). These sessions will emphasize practical figure editing with vector-based tools and optional customization of participants’ own figures.