Art & Design alum Lia Petronio (BFA’14) has combined her backgrounds in fine art, research, and coding to become a data visualization engineer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Working on the Cancer Data Science team, Petronio designs and develops the front end of websites and data portals, including the UX/UI, branding, graphics, and interactive data visualization tools for various data.
At Mason Gross, Petronio says, she built a solid foundation in a variety of media, such as drawing from life, illustration, infographics, 2D and 3D animation, video, and coding websites.
“The introduction to web development and data visualization in my design courses had a major impact on my decision to do a master’s in data visualization,” says Petronio, who earned her MFA from Northeastern University. “I would have no idea that coding was something that interested me had I not been introduced to it at MGSA.”
Some of her work includes designing “petal plots” (radial visualizations) for a research experiment that measured the probability of cancer types traveling to other areas of the body, which was published in Nature. Her team’s cover art submission was also selected for that issue.
The variety of skills Petronio acquired has enabled her to work in positions that accommodate both her design and development backgrounds. Petronio says she believes that developers who possess visual arts skills, like UX/UI, graphics, and data visualization, have an advantage in the field of software engineering.
Petronio also credits MGSA with teaching her how to think visually, communicate and present her work effectively, and flourish in situations of ambiguity.
“My classes gave me a good education around problem-solving and working within unclear directions.” she says. “…I find that my strong background and experience in visual language and design thinking has enabled me to interpret and make educated guesses to fill in the blanks in any design challenge and to welcome mistakes and critiques as a tool for iteration and improvement.”