Whether teaching quantum principles through card games and theatre or creating innovative films sharing the human stories behind the present-day lives of scientists, the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) Kawalek Lab, also known as the STAGE Lab, has consistently bridged the gap between science and art.
STAGE is taking its next step, going from a PME lab to a center housed under the engineering school. A celebratory event during Winter Quarter will take place to mark this milestone.
“Thanks to the extraordinary students from across the University who have collaborated on a growing number of projects, STAGE has been able to expand its reach and impact,” Kawalek said. “Becoming a center will accelerate these efforts and facilitate new partnerships, both nationally and internationally.”
STAGE–Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration–is a full-scale laboratory embedded within PME, focused on creating and developing new theatre, film, games, and other artistic endeavors inspired by science and technology.
This fluid, dynamic mission has allowed interdisciplinary collaboration to take many forms, including a suite of card games based on quantum mechanics, the award-winning film series Curiosity: The Making of a Scientist and such innovative multimedia stage plays as Entanglement, which melds quantum concepts with the story of a young woman whose investigation into her late father’s life becomes its own kind of “measurement problem.”.
“What we do is a little bit quirky,” Kawalek recently told the UChicago Hong Kong podcast The Course.
But the quirkiness comes with a mission. STAGE harnesses the power of storytelling, emotional engagement, and entertainment to translate complex scientific ideas into relatable human experience, promoting understanding of the sciences in the public arena through new forms of artistic expression.
This has included global engagement, most recently with a presentation of the Quantum Games at Tohoku University in Japan. The event, profiled on national Japanese television, was part of a ‘quantum alliance’ between UChicago and Tohoku to accelerate quantum research and build an international quantum workforce. In November, the games, also known as the Quantum Casino, will be presented as the inaugural public event at the official opening of UChicago’s new Center in Paris
For those eager to experience the games even sooner and closer to home, the Quantum Casino will be presented in October at the public event accompanying the Chicago Quantum Summit.
STAGE Director of Science Sunanda Prabhu-Gaunkar said the transition to a center will allow these sorts of collaborations to grow.
“Sometimes people perceive science as something locked away in an ivory tower, but STAGE wants to make sure everyone feels welcome to scientific conversations,” said Prabhu-Gaunkar, who has her PhD in Electrical Engineering with research in Quantum Electronics from Northwestern University. “Art, storytelling, and media may seem unusual methods for expressing scientific concepts, but melding these worlds produces a wholly unique result. At the heart of STAGE is an unending curiosity shared by artists and scientists alike, both equipped with limitless ways of looking at our world. Moving forward as the STAGE Center, those national and international collaborations and innovations will only continue to flourish.”