IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016 - 13

The 3-D portraits were displayed alongside boxes containing the original finds.

and receive in return a microarray of
hundreds of thousands of SNPs, but for
Dewey-Hagborg to get similar results
from forensic samples it would be prohibitively expensive. Besides, she didn't
need hundreds of thousands of SNPs.
She continued in the do-it-yourself
vein, selecting roughly 40 SNPs and
analyzing them in the lab herself using
a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR is a technique that
amplifies a few copies of DNA across
several thousands of degrees of magnitude. It is based on the natural process of DNA replication even though it
occurs in a lab. This "molecular photocopying" is fast and inexpensive. These
results were then sent to Genewiz for
sequencing, and genetic blueprints
were returned to Dewey-Hagborg in the
form of a text file full of codes.

Creative Process
When she was not in the lab, DeweyHagborg was at her computer working
on two pieces of software. First, she
used the BioPython library to develop a
data interpretation program to read in
the coded text file and output a list of
genetic traits like ancestry, gender, hair
curl, and eye color. Next, she appropriated an open source MATLAB 3-D modeling program from Babel, Switzerland,

called MorphFace, in essence turning a
A Media Whirlwind
3-D facial recognition program into a
The Wall Street Journal showed up at a
3-D facial generator that could morph a
work-in-progress show at the Clocktower
face based on her input parameters.
Gallery in New York, and Dewey-Hagborg
Although the owners of the samsuddenly found herself and Stranger
ples are anonymous, it is
Visions on the front page of
clear that the final 3-D
the "Metro" section of the
models are not meant to
newspaper. From there
Her life was
be exact. They are art
it got crazy. "And
taken over by media
and science blended,
that," she says, "is
requests and e-mails
"this whole swath
where it ended up
that ran the gamut from
of stuff that is being
stopping in a way."
amalgamated
The media
hate mail questioning the
in the creation of
whirlwind
m a nethics of her art to people
these portraits," she
aged to freeze everyhoping to send her
says. Some paramthing in time to what
their DNA.
eters were invented.
Dewey-Hagborg calls
For example, with no
"a snapshot of a much
way to determine age, Dewmore ambitious project,"
ey-Hagborg parameterized each
but the project took on a second
model to be roughly 30 years old, which
life as media representation and pub is close to her own age. She played with
lic intervention.
other parameters, generating five or
She had to deal with the sudden
six potential portraits for each sample,
fame. As Dewey-Hagborg continued
and ultimately chose the one that she
to work on her Ph.D. project, her life
found most aesthetically pleasing for
was taken over by media requests and
printing. After each life-size sculpe-mails that ran the gamut from hate
ture was produced on a color printer,
mail questioning the ethics of her art to
Dewey-Hagborg finished the models
people hoping to send her their DNA.
by hand, adding features like freckles,
But much good came from the situwhich are the one thing she found
tion. Dewey-Hagborg traveled, held
very hard to incorporate into the modexhibitions, and, perhaps most imporeling process.
tantly, talked with different audiences.

June 2016

iEEE women in engineering magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016