Local StoriesMay 31, 2024

Meet Nikola Canigova

Local Stories

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Nikola Canigova. Nikola was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Saki the Artist.

Nikola, thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to bring our readers up to speed – can you introduce yourself and share your story?
I am a scientist born in Slovakia. Despite graduating from an international high school, I studied biology at a Slovak university, which turned out to be a crucial piece of the puzzle for my future.

Since Slovak science is underfunded, the university laboratories are forced to reuse as many materials as possible to save resources. While studying DNA packaging in yeast cells, I got used to glass test tubes and Petri dishes, washing and reusing plastic tubes or the creativity in optimizing processes to reduce reagents and materials used.

For my PhD I decided to try out science in a more international environment and applied to the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). I was amazed by the limitless experimental options the institute provides and fully dove into my research on immune cell migration. However, I soon became aware of a negative side effect of this limitless science. Without thinking twice, scientists buy materials they might end up never using, or to speed up research consume tons of plastic materials that are usually trashed after a single use. Knowing science can be done differently, I decided to do something about it.

We’ve heard great things about your organization. For our readers who might not be as familiar, can you please tell them about the organization?
Inspired by a talk from Green Labs Austria, I decided to start a similar initiative at ISTA. The goal of the initiative was to make research more environmentally friendly mainly by reducing energy consumption and material waste. We implemented several successful changes tackling both problems and even started recycling a portion of our lab waste, which wasn’t possible before. Although this was motivating, it still didn’t solve the problem of wasteful resource use in science. We struggled to appeal to people not already concerned about these topics, so we wanted to try something new. We wanted to catch their interest using art, which is where Saki came into the picture.

So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Saki the Artist and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Saki.
Saki is an exceptional artist with a scientific background, combining both the knowledge of the problems in science and expertise in creating beautiful functional art pieces. With her experience in upcycling any materials into striking fashionable clothing, she was exactly the right person to transform our lab waste into something eye-catching and thought-provoking. The idea was to show that the plastic we discard is not waste, but rather a valuable resource, which should be treasured, reused or repurposed. We wanted scientists to be attracted by the beauty of Saki’s creations, but go home thinking how to improve their own ecological footprint.

One of Saki’s projects was a beautiful ball gown made out of 400 used and cleaned or expired nitrile lab gloves. Saki spent 200 hours meticulously stitching them together one by one, creating a dress, which she wore to the Vienna Ball of Sciences. Many people approached her to compliment the dress and only after closer inspection realized it’s made completely out of waste material. This sparked enthusiastic discussions about the collection process, glove usage in science and possible improvements in standard lab practices. This proved that art can be a great way to capture people’s interest and pave the way for discussions about sustainable lab practices and changes in lab waste infrastructure.

One of the challenges we faced was getting people interested enough to invest their time into more sustainable research practices. It was difficult to make recycling matter to them, as this is often perceived as a boring, thankless chore. Saki’s art was a game changer, because it brought excitement and interest to these people, and it helped them to form an emotional connection with recycling. We informed the scientists about the goal of the collection and sent them updates about the art process. This way, scientists get to physically see the fruits of their labor, such as a collection of functional chandeliers, each made of a different type of discarded non-hazardous lab plastic. As complex glass chandeliers are luxurious items, this elevated our waste into a similar kind of value and made the scientists think twice about their own plastic consumption. After the collection period ended, the scientists collecting the plastics said that they would have liked to continue separating the recyclable waste and felt bad about tossing the items back into the usual trash bins, proving that they were emotionally vested in the endeavor. This demonstrates the need and desire for more recycling solutions, and we hope that these individuals will drive a change at our institute as well as globally.

Our goal is not only to improve the lab practices at our institute, but to drive a change across scientific institutions. Therefore the presentation of Saki’s art pieces plays a crucial role to inspire other artists and scientists. Saki’s art pieces have already been showcased by ISTA social media, to our fellow scientists at a lecture series and will be presented to the public at the ISTA Open Campus day. We also aim at presenting the art at other scientific institutions to increase our reach. The presentations are combined with tips on how to improve the ecological footprint in the lab or in daily life and are a fantastic way to kick off the much needed behavioral change of scientists and our society as a whole.

I see great potential in combining art and science to tackle climate change issues and I’m extremely happy to have worked on this lab waste upcycling project with Saki. Without her none of this could have happened and I only hope we will continue doing more science upcycling art in the future.