By day, Janelian Christopher Bruns designs specialized software applications that give scientific images a new edge – or rather, a new dimension. With his apps, two-dimensional images become 3D graphics, allowing scientists to rotate and examine the images in greater depth. But come evening, when Bob's (Janelia Research Campus's on-site restaurant) turns from café to pub, Bruns veers from his day job into a different domain – virtual reality.
“Virtual reality has been a passion of mine for the past three years,” Bruns says. “When you put on a headset, you get this very engaging, even emotional, experience.”
Most people associate virtual reality, or VR, with the gaming sector; indeed that’s where Bruns got his start. In 2013 he developed software for the popular 90s video game “Doom,” casting users into an alien-ridden battleground for a more visceral thrill. But beyond video games, Bruns sees the technology’s latent potential. “I have great hopes that virtual reality will be useful in scientific visualization,” he says. “But I do think it's appropriate to be skeptical – we’re still experimenting.”
Bruns explains that, early in his career as a structural biologist, it was fatiguing to decipher structures when he couldn’t tell which piece was in the foreground. “With 3D glasses, I could perceive depth, making the process more efficient and more comfortable.” Virtual reality could be the next step, he says. “In principle, you perceive all the same facts as you would on the monitor, but my hope is that VR can expedite the viewing, analysis, and understanding of already-solved molecules.”
A VR evangelist of sorts, Bruns sees recent widespread access to the technology as an opportunity to expand into a realm brimming with possibilities: Imagine a protein engineer who creates therapeutic compounds. Instead of designing a protein on a computer screen, the scientist could enter a virtual world, walk around the protein of interest, interact with it, and even make changes to amino acid sidechains.
What’s more, with the advent of motion-tracking controllers collaborators could connect on an entirely new level. Researchers separated by thousands of miles could potentially join the same simulated world, each seeing what the other is seeing, and even watching each other’s hand movements.
Bruns points out that virtual reality would not necessarily reveal new aspects of science, but rather, provide scientists a more effective visualization method. He compares it to when he was a structural biologist working with 3D stereoscopic displays (similar to how we view 3D movies).
Bruns has collaborated with his spouse, Cami K. Bruns, who earned a PhD in biology at Stanford University. Together, they've created software that displays molecules in a virtual realm, where users can “drive” around bonds and peer through benzene rings. His full vision, however, encompasses much more – VR-assisted drug development, protein engineering, and even an extension of his current work, which helps scientists trace neuronal pathways in mouse brains.
In the meantime, Bruns leads a band of virtual reality enthusiasts at Janelia, hosting demonstrations and tutorials. In-between demos, he’s working to produce the software that will enable VR-based scientific visualization. “Eventually,” he says, “when scientists at Janelia use it, we’ll be able to see if this is really going to be helpful or not.”
