In a world where so much of science relies on experimentation in a laboratory and drawing visual conclusions, being blind or visually impaired presents a struggle for those seeking an education that relies on anything other than theoretical learning. Baylor professor Dr. Bryan Shaw has spent the last decade and more changing that perception.
From an inauspicious educational foundation (he admits to goofing off in high school, partying, and getting a middling 2.9 GPA), Shaw earned his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and biophysics at Washington State University. Then the breaks started to fall his way. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received his doctorate under the watchful eye of chemistry professor Dr. Joan S. Valentine. After that, he worked for Dr. George M. Whitesides at Harvard University, where he completed his postdoctoral fellowship.
“I worked in this crazy lab at Harvard where we did all sorts of wild stuff that was outside the realm of chemistry, and it taught me to have courage,” Shaw said. “I remember one day Bill Gates came to visit, and he literally walked into our lab, went to speak to Dr. Whitesides, and walked out giving us millions of dollars. And next thing, he’s on the Charlie Rose Show raving about how great our lab was. It was all very exciting.”
During his years at Harvard, Shaw and his wife Elizabeth had a son, Noah. Noticing a white reflection in their baby’s eyes, they took him to an ophthalmologist who diagnosed Noah with retinoblastoma, which resulted in having to remove his right eye.
In August 2010, Shaw secured a faculty position at Baylor University, and one of his first projects was a software application that would help other parents identify retinoblastoma by comparing a photo of a child’s eye with a large database of thousands of images of eyes with leukocoria, an abnormal white reflection from the pupil. The CRADLE app is still downloadable for free and is now also used to identify congenital cataracts and Coats disease.
“I never made any money, but it’s probably had the biggest impact,” Shaw said. “Greg Hamerly, the computer science professor at Baylor, did all the computer science work, and I collected the images to help train the machine learning algorithm.”
While attending a party for his son in 2012, he noticed a blind three-year-old crawling around on the grass on all fours. When he found a toy, he would hold it up to his mouth to examine it.
“I got this idea staring at him that he was using his mouth to visualize things,” Shaw said. “The mouth and tongue are our most sensitive tactile sensors. They call it somatosensory perception: visualizing things along with manual touch. That really was the inspiration for so much of our research.”
The basic idea behind Shaw’s research was that humans don’t see with their eyes. Instead, they see with their brains. By creating 3D models of protein molecules from “gummy bear” gelatin or non-toxic resin, students were able to identify specific structures by mouth at more than 85 percent accuracy.
The next step was to prepare 2D images — such as graphs — so they could be interpreted by someone who was blind or visually impaired.
“A student of mine, Juan Lopez, helped create these super-thin 3D printouts on translucent resin,” Shaw said. “They’re like an engraving, but when you hold them up to the light, they’re exactly what you’d see on the video screen. Of course, I thought we’d invented the lithophane, but actually the Chinese did in 700 CE as an art form.”
The lithophanes can be read by fingers, eyes, or both. That means data can be made universally accessible so a person with blindness, a person with vision, and someone with vision in between can sit around a table, have the exact same piece of data, and talk about it at the exact same level of resolution and clarity.
“We tested the lithophanes out on people with blindness, some of whom were high schoolers who’d never seen these data formats, and they were all able to interpret them once we explained how the data worked,” Shaw said.
Another creation of the Shaw Research Group is the Zampoña tool, named for the traditional Andean pan flute that it resembles. Developed by doctoral candidate Levi Garza, the device clamps onto a gel electrophoresis box to help blind and visually impaired scientists accurately load protein samples.
“The Zampoña makes the most common benchtop device in the life sciences accessible to a person with blindness,” Shaw said. “This little snap-on device makes it easy to load the samples, and it’s pretty cool. We purposefully made the pipes for loading samples asymmetrical, so you’d always be able to have your bearings when you pick it up and go to snap it on.”
Throughout the past decade, Shaw has also focused on what he calls his “bread and butter science,” studying how copper protein aggregates can cause a rare form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. His inspiration for this research came from his thesis advisor at UCLA, Dr. Valentine, whom he describes as the world’s expert on this particular copper protein.
“I’ve carried that into my career here, trying to dream up small little molecules that can stop it from doing all the bad stuff it does in ALS,” Shaw said.
When asked about the future of his research, Shaw is unexpectedly reluctant to go into detail.
“I’ve got something really cool going on now, and it’s related to thinking about humanoid robots as people with disabilities,” he said. “I’m starting to get into robots and assistive technology for robots, trying to create market forces for assistive technology for people with disabilities.”
Looking to the future, Shaw muses over the students he teaches and mentors at Baylor.
“They’re becoming professors, and others are going to med school, but they’re all learning that when you have a problem in life, it’s because nobody’s solved that problem yet,” Shaw said.
“I wasn’t a computer scientist or an ophthalmologist. I was just a dude who had a kid who had eye cancer … but in a university setting, I was able to gather all these resources and tackle some problems in a unique way.
“All I know is that when you’re out there doing something, you’re always going to have crazy stuff happen to you,” he continued. And if you react a certain way, you end up having an interesting life. It took me years, but there’s plenty of time — that’s what years are for.”
