TIR’s “artist in residence” from 2016-2019 was Oliver Hoeller, who played a key role in establishing the blog’s look and feel. Oliver is a scientist and freelance illustrator whose work has appeared on the cover of a number of journals, and who also carries out web design, portraiture, and reportage.

Oliver originally hails from Austria, and did undergraduate research at the Institute for Molecular Pathology (IMP) at the Vienna Biocenter. He moved to Cambridge (UK) for his PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, working with Rob Kay on chemotaxis in the slime mould Dictyostelium. He then moved to the Bay Area for his postdoc, before returning to Vienna in 2020.

Oliver’s watercolours are available for purchase – either contact him via his website or look at his portfolio on Etsy. His Instagram feed can be found here.

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Mark Palfreyman joined TIR as a regular contributor in 2020, and played a key role in postings during the coronavirus pandemic. He writes: Not all who wander are lost, but most are. I’m one of those. I started my life in France playing with worms, after college in Colorado decided to try it again. I moved to Utah and did a PhD. Then I found some fruit flies in Vienna and played with them. Now I’m taking a step sideways as a duck might step sideways à l’orange; or, maybe more likely, as a coq steps sideways au vin. What I’m currently doing, I know not. 

More of Mark’s artwork and some of his photography can be viewed here.

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Aparna Baxi made regular contributions to TIR in 2020. At the time, she was an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the George Washington University (USA), studying Molecular Medicine through the application of mass spectrometry.

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Other artistic contributors to date include Caroline Wedel and Dorotea Fracchiolla.

From 2024, Brooke began using Midjourney to generate artwork to accompany postings; prior to that, when nobody was available to produce artwork he would put silly captions on paintings that he likes instead.

Would YOU be interested in contributing artwork for a TIR posting? It’s always great in getting new human-made visuals – leave a comment here, or send a DM to me on Bluesky to discuss it. Some more details can be found here.