Heiko is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Dental Informatics at the School of Dental Medicine, University of Pittsburgh with secondary appointments in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and the School of Information Sciences. In 1993, he graduated from the School of Dentistry, Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.
He continued his career at Humboldt and was appointed as a faculty member in the Department of Periodontology and also received his PhD in the field of dental material sciences. Since 1996, he has been working in the emerging discipline of Dental Informatics.
In 2000, he earned an MSBA with a concentration in Computer and Information Science from the Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University, Philadelphia. His research has as its focus the development of Web-based educational resources for dental professionals and the creation of online research communities.
His projects have a foundation in the fields of education, usability engineering, medical and dental informatics and computer science. He leads an NLM funded research team for the development of the Dental Informatics Online Community–an open, worldwide community for dental informatics research which is intended to facilitate the development of research projects and the collaborations that support them.
He co-authored the book "The Global Village of Dentistry" which was published in Germany and in the US.
He has served as member of the Working Group Steering Committee of the
American Medical Informatics Association and as chair of the Dental Informatics Working Group. He also served as consultant to the Office of the Chief Dental Officer, Department of Health, United Kingdom. Heiko is actively involved in the development of the medical subspecialty "Clinical Informatics."
He is founding partner and a principal of S3 Web Technologies, LLC, an Internet services and consulting company for the dental and medical markets.
Heiko has been working with digital images since 1991. He is a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, member of the BioCommunications Association and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He works extensively with Photoshop to accomplish challenging image requirements of today’s digital market. He teaches a two-day further education seminar for practicing dentists about digital photography and image manipulation. Heiko won several photographic awards and prints fine art pictures for artists in the Pittsburgh area.
Why do I think academics need Photoshop?
Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. (Edward R. Tufte in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information)
This is a how to Blog about Adobe Photoshop. Specifically, it’s tailored to academics and people whose job it is to write grant proposals and present complex research findings via posters, talks and speeches.
The idealistic goal of today’s academic is to be fully funded and free to do the thing you love: conduct cutting-edge research.
The realistic world for today’s academic is a dwindling supply of federal funding competed for with lower and lower odds of success.
So why add a new skill set when you are already overwhelmed with must-dos? Simply this: To stand out in the crowd. To be noticed. To improve your grant’s chance of being funded in the next round.
Can Photoshop do all that? Yes. Using Photoshop and sound design principles, you will communicate your data with the most visually effective graphs, tables and pictures.
Think about this first: We humans live in a visual world where images are our most important means of communicating.
Second, think about this too: For federal funding, the trend is a huge increase in the number of grant submissions at a time of flat funding, which has made the scientific review process a fast-track exercise for study sections. The National Institutes of Health alone received 46,501 applications in 2006 of which only 19 percent were projected to receive funding(1).
The stark reality of the grant review process is that only a small number of grants will actually be read in their entirety. Reviewers will scan the others and take a "look" at the images and graphics. That "look" may be your one and only chance to pique a reviewer’s interest in reading more than just the abstract.
Photoshop lets you create graphics that attract the reader’s eye; images that tell a compelling data story; visuals that demand a second look. With Photoshop, time devoted to graphical design is a worthy communications endeavor not a distraction from writing time.
Good design is clear thinking made visible. It’s an attainable goal for every scientist, educator and academic.
A picture is worth a thousand words–Just in advertisement?
This proverb not only applies to many stunning images captured by press photographers, but it is equally true for informational graphics for academic grant applications.
Learn how to convey complex ideas in easy-to-comprehend graphics that rapidly convey to reviewers and panel members the gist of your application without the necessity of reading the entire application. You’ll come to understand how to use information in the communication of complex information through clear language and visuals(1).
Research Results for the Public:
(1) http://www.nih.gov/about/researchresultsforthepublic/
