Joe Luciani — Design & Fabrication

Every scientific cover I design starts as a brainstorming session with my wife, Jessica. Once we lock in the core inspiration, I run with the execution. While many illustrations lean into a glowing, organic vibe, this cover required a highly structural, schematic approach to visualize her Rouge Research Group team's new method for delivering gold metallodrugs into cells using chimeric siRNA-DNA surfactants, developed within UConn Chemistry at UConn. I used Rhino3D and Grasshopper to parametrically model all the individual components. The central micelle is packed with gold pentagonal structures representing the metallodrugs, and it is surrounded by a radiating halo of double-helix DNA and siRNA strands. The graphic captures the exact moment the delivery vehicle begins to disassemble, dropping its gold payload and nucleic acid strands right above a dense lipid bilayer cell membrane. Once the 3D geometry was dialed in, I brought everything into Photoshop, layering the renders and adding a distinct, grainy texture to the background. This gave the final image a clean, textbook-style aesthetic that perfectly fit the Bioconjugate Chemistry journal's focus and successfully landed us the front cover.

Publication Reference: Hartmann, A. K.; Gudipati, S.; Pettenuzzo, A.; Ronconi, L.; Rouge, J. L. Chimeric siRNA-DNA surfactants for the enhanced delivery and sustained cytotoxicity of gold metallodrugs, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 2020, 31, 4, 1063-1069. DOI: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.0c00047

Every year, I go back and forth on whether to design and fabricate a custom holiday gift for friends, family, and coworkers. In 2020, I was firmly in the "no" camp. I was a new dad with a five-month-old daughter, Ava, and my free time was practically nonexistent. In fact, most of this project was completed late at night, keeping a close eye on the video baby monitor propped up right next to my soldering station. But per my usual habit, I mulled the idea over just long enough for it to become uncomfortably late, triggering my favorite kind of motivation: the rush of a high-pressure, time-crunched project.

That year, I wanted to lean into electronics with a self-imposed, slightly masochistic challenge: just how small of an LED could I physically solder by hand? The answer was the microscopic SMD0603. I sourced a variety pack of the tiny colored LEDs on Amazon and ordered a batch of 3/32” brass rod from McMaster-Carr to serve as the structural framework. The biggest hurdle wasn't the microscopic soldering itself, but fixturing the brass rod accurately. I initially over-engineered the solution, testing out 3D-printed jigs and even machining a custom 6061 aluminum fixture on the Haas mill. Ironically, the most effective method turned out to be completely analog. I printed my CAD drawing directly onto paper, covered it with strips of standard 3M double-sided tape, and laid it out across my silicone soldering mat. Using flush-cut pliers, I trimmed each brass segment to size and pressed it onto the tape. The adhesive held everything perfectly flat and aligned, allowing me to carefully apply flux and solder the joints together cleanly with my Hakko iron.

The resulting tree was a functional, structural circuit. The entire perimeter edge of the raw brass tree acted as the positive side, while a custom-bent piece of brass rod in the center established the negative side, holding a single CR2032 watch battery perfectly in place via mechanical tension. There was no on/off switch—the trees simply stayed illuminated in bright reds, greens, blues, and whites until you physically popped the battery out or it died completely. Despite the late start and the microscopic components, I managed to build 32 of these miniature glowing trees.

Designing cover art for a comprehensive review article offers a different kind of creative freedom compared to a standard research paper. After a highly collaborative brainstorming session with my wife, Jessica, to visualize the concept of 'endosomal escape' and gene regulation explored by her Rouge Research Group team in the UConn Chemistry department at UConn, we landed on the idea of a biometric security check. With the concept set for Trends in Biotechnology, I ran with the execution. Her team was analyzing nucleic acid nanostructures designed to act like a biometric marker, successfully tricking the outer cell membrane into granting them access. To visualize this "access granted" concept, we combined a giant human fingerprint with a cross-section of a cell. The white ridges of the thumbprint naturally swirl and morph right into the internal organelles, like the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum. I kept the background graphic very flat and vector-styled against a solid red canvas, which made the 3D-rendered, spiky blue nanoparticles visually pop as they successfully pass the security check and enter the cell.

Publication Reference: Gudipati, S.; Zhang, K.; Rouge, J. L. Towards Self-Transfecting Nucleic Acid Nanostructures for Gene Regulation, Trends Biotechnol., 2019, 37, 983-994. DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2019.02.004

Bringing a highly conceptual biochemical transformation to life requires bridging the gap between artistic metaphor and precise molecular function. Finding that metaphor is always a highly collaborative effort with my wife, Jessica, and her Rouge Research Group at UConn Chemistry within UConn. Once we decided to anchor this composition around the classic theater masks to illustrate the "unmasking" of DNAzyme surfactants for ChemBioChem, I dove into the 3D modeling. The research focused on how these DNAzymes assemble onto nanocapsules, forming a protective layer that engages the cell's exterior. Once inside, the capsule breaks down to release DNAzyme dimers that escape into the cytosol to cleave specific mRNA targets, ultimately converting a diseased cell into a healthier one. To represent this transformation, the dark, weeping mask of tragedy serves as the diseased state on the cell's exterior, which transitions seamlessly across a lipid bilayer into a vibrant, healthy cross-section of organelles. I generated the protective nanocapsules and activated DNAzyme dimers digitally, blending the theatrical metaphor with rigorous molecular function for the front cover.

Publication Reference: Hartmann, A. K.; Cairns-Gibson, D. F.; Santiana, J. J.; Tolentino, M.; Barber, H. M.; Rouge, J. L. Enzymatically ligated DNA-surfactants: Unmasking Hydrophobically Modified DNA for Intracellular Gene Regulation, ChemBioChem, 2018, 19, 1734-1739. DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201800302

In Northwestern University's Design Thinking and Communication (DTC) course, the rite of passage for freshmen was a notoriously rigorous foam core modeling assignment. Students were tasked with producing orthographic and isometric drawings of a specific house and a set of chairs, followed by translating those drawings into physical models. The grading was unforgiving, with a hyper-focus on neatness, precision, and flawless build quality. After watching the students agonize over hidden seams and perfectly flush joints, Pam Daniels, Brandon Williams, and I decided it was time to turn the tables for April Fools' Day.

Our plan was simple but ambitious: recreate the exact same house and chairs, but at a massive four-foot scale. We took over the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center at midnight, committing to the exact same exacting standards we demanded of the freshmen. Because scaling up foam core introduces massive edge-hiding challenges, we couldn't just tape it together and call it a night. We engineered and fabricated on the fly, 3D-printing and laser-cutting custom tools specifically designed to miter, conceal, and cleanly fold the giant foam core corners. We spent hours measuring, cutting, and meticulously hiding every corrugated edge to ensure the craftsmanship was absolutely flawless.

By 4:00 AM, the massive, pristine model was finished. We positioned the giant house and chairs right in the center of the Ford lobby—a surreal, scaled-up mirror of the students' ongoing torture, ready to greet them for morning classes. We left the installation completely uncredited, save for one tiny, hidden easter egg. Hanging on the interior wall of the giant house was a framed picture of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: a quiet nod to the midnight architects, Pam, Brandon, and Joe.