Alum profile: Sue Anne Zollinger: BioNews: Spring 2018: Newsletters: News & Events: Department of Biology: Indiana University Bloomington

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BioNews: Spring 2018
Alum profile: Sue Anne Zollinger

Alum profile: Sue Anne Zollinger

By: Terri Greene

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

A nexus of art and science . . . and a slice of pie

Sue Anne Zollinger, who completed her Ph.D. in biology from Indiana University in 2007, is excited about an investigation she and colleagues have recently begun in collaboration with an avian sleep expert. They will measure if and to what degree noise pollution interferes with sleep quality in urban birds.

“It is a two-part thing,” Zollinger explains, “where we have cameras in nest boxes of urban Great Tits (songbirds common in cities here, related to chickadees) with recorders that track noise and temperature and light pollution along with nocturnal behaviour of the birds (whether they ‘wake up’ more often in noisy places).

“The second part is in the lab, where we will put small wireless EEG electrodes and heart rate monitors on birds and record sleep state in the brain and heart rate during the night with traffic noise exposure.”

The group hopes to learn more about the relationship between poor sleep quality and the observed effects attributed to noise pollution as a stressor. Many correlations exist between noise-disrupted sleep in humans and numerous health problems often found in people chronically exposed to noise.

Zollinger is a research scientist at The Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. Much of her research focuses on how birds and other animals cope with urban noise pollution. Conservationists and human health experts alike are increasingly concerned about physiological stress responses caused by chronic exposure to loud noise. High levels of noise pollution have been linked with decreased breeding success and species richness as well as changes in vocal behavior in bird, mammal, and amphibian species. In humans, chronic noise can result in high blood pressure, hyperglycemia, and elevated cholesterol levels as well as delays in brain development, impaired cognitive function, and deficits in learning and memory.

Zollinger, however, did not start out in life to become a scientist. While growing up in the Washington, D.C., area, she had aspirations of procuring a career as a visual artist. She attended a special magnet high school for the arts in Maryland and then started a B.F.A. program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During that time, Zollinger landed an internship in the anthropology department at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. She worked in the “Africa” collections, cataloging holdings for an upcoming exhibit. Her proximity to the museum’s birds department allowed her to interact with avian scientists and preparators.

After taking a few years off from school to earn and save money for tuition, Zollinger transferred to University of Illinois at Chicago to complete her bachelor’s degree. Influenced by her experiences at the Field Museum, she added some biology courses to her schedule to inspire her art.; She quickly realized, however, a new passion: SCIENCE! Zollinger transferred to the University of Maryland where she completed a B.S. (cum laude) in biological sciences.

Rod Suthers’ innovative work in vocal production and communication in birds as well as the multi-departmental community of animal behavior researchers in the Center for Integrative Study in Animal Behavior drew Zollinger to Indiana University to pursue her doctoral studies.

As a means to not get too removed from art while working on her Ph.D., Zollinger resurrected the pie club. The Pie of the Month Club—postcards Zollinger designed with an interesting pie recipe on one side and an original illustration on the other side—was a novel way she conceived during her years in Chicago to stay connected with friends as well as to regularly create a new piece of artwork. It grew into a website during her IU years. “The POTMC was always mostly about cultural history, art, and folklore more than actually about pie baking,” Zollinger explains.

After receiving her Ph.D., Zollinger was offered a postdoc position at University of St Andrews in Scotland, where she worked with one of the fathers of birdsong research, Peter Slater, in collaboration with Henrik Brumm (The Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany). The project examined effects of urban noise on birdsong learning and vocal behavior. For logistical reasons, the project and Zollinger relocated to The Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany in 2010. It was there she became a research scientist and began a long-term collaboration with Henrik Brumm in the institute’s Communication and Social Behaviour Group.

The nexus of art and science continues to be an important part of Zollinger’s life and work (although keeping the POTMC going became impractical after her move to Europe).

"I find many aspects of art and science are essentially the same,” says Zollinger. “Both artists and scientists seek ways to better understand and interpret the world around them. The creative part of me finds the same challenge and satisfaction in planning and conducting experiments as it does in creating visual art, and my training in art gives me an important advantage in designing innovative ways to test hypotheses in my research.”

Outside of the lab, Zollinger is developing projects that satisfy both her science and art backgrounds.

She’s creating a series of paintings and drawings of birds from A-Z for a children’s book about bird diversity and behavior. She regularly organizes tours of local biological and zoological sites for the public. And, she is photographically and historically documenting medical “moulages” (wax models of pathologies and diseases) from the end of the 18th century through the mid-20th century. From an artist’s viewpoint, Zollinger finds the “moulages” fascinating. She notes, “They were created by very talented and highly skilled sculptors entirely for pedagogical use by doctors—never for public display."

Although Zollinger no longer spends time uncovering bizarre or old-time pie recipes for the POTMC, it seems ironic that she now lives in a country where its language doesn’t have a word for pie. Germans call everything Kuchen (cake). Zollinger jokingly muses, “If we don’t get the next grant, maybe I’ll end up opening a pie shop here and try to teach Germans the difference between a pie and a cake.”

Alum profile: Sue Anne Zollinger

A nexus of art and science . . . and a slice of pie

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