Graham Johnson is a computational biologist and Certified Medical Illustrator (CMI). He joined the Allen Institute from the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). There, his lab worked to generate, simulate and visualize molecular models of cells (mesoscope.org). At the Allen Institute for Cell Science, Graham and his team will compile all experiment and imaging data into multi-scale, spatiotemporal and interactive models of the cell – via the Animated Cell Explorer.
Graham has specialized in the visual communication of molecular and cellular biology since graduating from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Art as Applied to Medicine in 1997. He illustrates the textbook “Cell Biology” by Tom Pollard, Bill Earnshaw, and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz as an author, and has created thousands of scientific visuals ranging from journal covers to pedagogic animations and game designs. He received his PhD in Biology in 2011 from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, working in Art Olson’s Molecular Graphics Lab. Graham has run his lab at UCSF since 2012 as a QB3@UCSF Faculty Fellow where he now maintains a part-time position.