When Anna Yiu, a second-year Natural Sciences student at Churchill College, began her UROP-funded summer project at the Museum of Zoology, she faced an exciting challenge: creating digital models of delicate insect specimens with resolution high enough for both rigorous scientific research and public engagement. The solution she helped develop could reshape how small museums worldwide preserve their collections.
‘I would not have been able to do any of this without the Bill Brown Creative Workshops being available to me’, Anna said. ‘It has been amazing to have this open to me and to be able to access the equipment and learn by doing. Jonathan Woolf, the workshops’ technician, has also been really helpful in guiding me through the resources at the facility.’
A Museum’s Challenge, An Undergraduate’s Opportunity
The Museum of Zoology houses extensive insect collections that serve as irreplaceable records of biodiversity. Among its treasures is a substantial ladybird collection unusually rich in “type” specimens – the original insects upon which entire species were named. These fragile specimens, paired with historical notebooks spanning decades, tell vital stories about environmental change. The Swallowtail butterfly, for instance, once thrived across Cambridgeshire but survives today only in the Norfolk Broads – a decline meticulously documented in the collection.
Yet every interaction carries risk. Each time researchers handle these fragile insects, they face potential damage to irreplaceable scientific material. Scholars must travel considerable distances to study them. The challenge was substantial: how could affordable 3D digitization make these specimens accessible online while preserving the originals, all without costs beyond a small museum’s modest budget?
The Insect Ecology Group who work extensively in the Museum’s Insect Collection partnered with Computer Science in this collaborative effort. Working under supervisors Dr Tiff Ki, Prof. Anil Madhavapeddy and Prof. Ed Turner and alongside first-year Computer Science colleagues Arissa-Elena Rotunjanu and Beatrice Spence, Anna became immersed in developing an innovative solution. As a small museum with limited resources compared to national institutions, they needed an approach scalable to small museums everywhere.
Where Innovation Meets Accessibility: The Role of the Bill Brown Creative Workshops
The Bill Brown Creative Workshops proved essential in transforming ambitious ideas into working systems. Despite having no prior experience with computer-aided design, Anna taught herself Fusion 360 using online tutorial videos. ‘It’s easier than you think, if you watch the tutorials’, she noted.
The workshops were vital in supporting the development. After Ari created an initial small-scale prototype, Anna used the Bill Brown Creative Workshops to refine and expand the design. She modelled a specialized 3D dome using Fusion 360, then printed the components using the facility’s 3D printers, and soldered LEDs and other components using the workshops’ electronics tools. The result: an ingenious imaging system costing under £100 to produce.
Without the Bill Brown Creative Workshops, this innovation would not have been achieved in the tight 9-week UROP project timeframe. The facility provided not just equipment but an environment where an undergraduate could experiment, iterate, and develop professional-grade solutions to real research problems.
An Elegant System Built in a Student Workshop
The dome system demonstrates how accessible tools can yield sophisticated results. An insect specimen sits on an adjustable stand with a unit cube providing calibration for standardized measurements. The camera slots into the dome, which rests on a motorized turntable surrounded by LED lights positioned to ensure even illumination without shadows – critical for capturing accurate 3D models.
Ari and Bea developed an iOS app using Swift and Xcode that controls the imaging process. Their app captures photos at set intervals as the dome rotates incrementally, generating hundreds of images. A Raspberry Pi controls the motor while the phone app manages photography.
These images feed into a processing pipeline employing Gaussian splatting, a machine learning technique for reconstructing 3D models. Working with Hexu Zhao and Dr Aurojit Panda, a researcher from New York University, the team has been training this model specifically on insect imagery, adapting cutting-edge computer vision technology to tiny, complex specimens.
Why High-Resolution 3D Models Transform Research
Digital 3D models offer researchers capabilities impossible with physical specimens alone. Scientists can explore and precisely measure specimens without physical contact, eliminating damage risk. Features physically difficult or impossible to measure become readily accessible – butterfly proboscis, tightly coiled and impossible to unravel without destroying the specimen, can be digitally traced and measured with accuracy.
The project has begun strategically with the Elephant Hawk moth, a nocturnal species possessing rare colour vision. Tiff’s research investigates how artificial street lighting impacts insect behaviour and whether colour vision influences these effects, making accurate digital models valuable.
Beyond individual research, digitization unlocks the collection’s historical depth for studying environmental change. Comparing aquatic insect specimens from across Cambridgeshire with those from Wicken Fen – the sole fenland area escaping drainage – reveals striking patterns. Historical specimens provide historical baselines informing conservation efforts with records in the collections informing the successful reintroduction of the Checkered Skipper butterfly after regional extinction.
An Open Future
The team’s commitment to open access will ensure digitized specimens become freely available online, democratizing access to these invaluable scientific collections.
With 3D printing becoming increasingly widespread and affordable, the team hopes their approach will prove invaluable for other institutions. Most museums worldwide operate with limited budgets and small staffs. This pipeline – developed in a College workshop – could enable museums globally to digitize and share collections without prohibitive equipment investments.
The Student Impact
By providing space, equipment, and access to professional-grade tools, the Bill Brown Creative Workshops enables students like Anna to develop practical skills while contributing to real-world research challenges.
From learning CAD software to soldering electronics and iterating designs through 3D printing, Anna acquired capabilities extending far beyond traditional coursework. She helped develop a solution with potential global impact for museum conservation and accessibility – all during her undergraduate studies.
The project demonstrates how making creative technology accessible to students can yield innovations benefiting entire fields. Anna’s work bridges natural sciences, engineering, and computer science, showing how interdisciplinary collaboration and accessible makerspaces empower the next generation of researchers.
For Anna and students like her, the workshops represent something profound: the opportunity to move from learning about science to actively advancing it, proving that groundbreaking research doesn’t always require expensive laboratories or years of experience – sometimes it just requires access, encouragement, and a space where curiosity can flourish into innovation.
As the Museum of Zoology continues digitising its collections, the foundation laid by an undergraduate student in a university workshop may well influence how museums worldwide preserve and share their irreplaceable specimens for generations to come.
For more info about the BBCW on how to get involved and / or support its work visit: The Bill Brown Creative Workshops – Churchill College