iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

1 in 3 breastfeeding mothers get mastitis. There is no early test. The milk changes first: sodium up, potassium down. Maral Mousavi's lab at @USCViterbi built a sticker sensor for nursing pads that reads this in 5 minutes. We drew the figures 💙 A The paper: doi.org/10.1002/adfm...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I took my Chemical Reviews cover to Times Square 🌃 Ionic liquids are salts that stay liquid and barely evaporate. Tuned right, they pull CO2 out of air, natural gas or biogas and can turn it into chemicals. Review by Sheng Dai, De-en Jiang and colleagues at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The Chemistry Nobel went to Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai today, for explaining how molecules choose a hand. Chirality is one of my favorite things to draw. Three of our covers, for Nature, Nature Chemistry and Angewandte Chemie 🧪

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I took my new Science Translational Medicine cover to Times Square 🗽🥜 The "poop pills for peanut allergy" study from Boston Children's Hospital: in a small early trial, donor gut bacteria helped 6 of 15 adults tolerate more peanut. Cover: a gut bacterium (blue) signals to a T cell (purple).

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My cover for Nature Immunology🧠✨ When blood leaks into the brain, microglia react to blood proteins and can turn harmful. The Akassoglou lab found that the clotting protein fibrinogen drives much of it. Microglia in blue, blood proteins in red.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

100 covers in Advanced Materials 🎉 Thank you to the 80+ research groups who trusted us with their science, and to the editors for picking them. If you have a paper coming out and would like a cover or figures for it, send us a message.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Our cover for the September Trends in Microbiology: a tangle of microbial interactions in a petri dish, growing out into a wastewater tank and bioreactors. Wenyu Gu and colleagues ask how far lessons from simple lab communities carry into real systems. doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

New animation, out now with a Stanford study in Science. The Lev Lab built a memory out of atoms and light: photons bounce between two mirrors and connect ultracold atom clouds the way synapses connect neurons. Watch the blurry Einstein come back into focus. Story: news.stanford.edu/stories/2026...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Human 3D Neurovascular Platform 🫀+ 🧠 My new cover illustrates a long-lived human 3D neurovascular PENTA-culture platform composed of a biomimetic silk scaffold and 5 cell types: neurons, astrocytes, microglia, brain microvascular endothelial cells, pericytes.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Heat that makes cold - no electricity needed 🔥→❄️ Our visual for Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Tsukuba: two ultra-thin shape-memory films turn waste heat directly into cooling. Published in Nature Energy 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

My cover is on #AdvancedMaterials!✨ Using ultrafast laser-and-X-ray measurements, the team pinned down exactly what controls the light-induced change in shape of perovskites: the choice of cation sitting inside the crystal ⚡️ Congrats to Mansha Dubey, Marina Leite and the whole team!❤️

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The part of our job that makes it special: seeing the finished cover print in the hands of the scientist behind the work. Beautiful science and art, meeting across time and distance through our studio. We value the chance to work directly with researchers to take their ideas and make them real 💙

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

My cover is on ACS Energy Letters! ☀️🔋 Perovskite solar cells are cheap & efficient but often unstable. This team dropped the fragile ingredient entirely, hit a new efficiency record for its type, and kept 90% performance after hours of full-power running. More stable, no weak link 💙

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

New animation from our studio! Fireflies and glowing waves come from one small molecule: a square of 2 carbons and 2 oxygens that breaks and emits light. Stanford found force breaks it in reverse order vs. heat. humsci.stanford.edu/feature/new-...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Three of the six figures we designed for a review that's just out in Fluids and Barriers of the CNS. The paper is "Restoring brain barriers: an innovative approach for treating neurological disorders."

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

New cover! When oxygen runs low in blood, gate between brain and blood stream starts to leak, and that leak is one of the earliest signs of brain injury. This team tried shining specific wavelengths on damaged barrier cells and restored the seal. And they found the actual molecular switch behind it!

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

It was so cool in to see one of our covers pop up at #FENS2026🧠✨ in a talk by @Pawel_Burkhardt's on the origins of the nervous system featuring the beautiful work on choanoflagellates. The studies on choanoflagellates and ctenophores shed light at how sensory-motor systems evolved - fascinating!

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

💙Getting a drug-delivering gel to stay on mucus-coated tissue is genuinely hard. The team designed a gel that forms in seconds using a bond the body can naturally break down over a few days. Also it doesn’t just coat the surface, it reaches into the mucus layer and tangles with it directly.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

🧴Two biodegradable plastics, PBS and PCL, don't mix. The fix in this work is a special "matchmaker" polymer that gets the two to crystallize together. They form structures the team calls spherulites with the internal architecture encoding how material will biodegrade at the end of its life.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Our cover in Nature Immunology! 🔬✨ Resident memory vs exhausted T cells in tumors: they look alike but are shaped by completely different signals. One fights, one is worn down. This work shows cancer therapy needs distinct strategies for each.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

This figure, created by our studio for a recent @cellpress.bsky.social StemCell review on #NeuralOrganoids. The goal isn't just to make figures look beautiful. It's to make complex science easier to understand without sacrificing accuracy. doi.org/10.1016/j.st...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

What if a tumor could be turned against itself? 🎯 My cover illustrates a new approach to cancer immunotherapy 🧬 Nanoparticles deliver self-amplifying RNA into the tumor, triggering IL-12 production that recruits the body’s own immune cells and reprograms it from within 💙 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/adfm...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

How does a silkworm spin a fiber stronger than steel? 🐛🧵 We created the 3D animation for a beautiful new study in Nature Communications, revealing (for the first time!) how silk is actually made, step by step, inside the silk gland of a worm. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

New cover in #Small! 💡✨ Some materials have flaws that can emit light in a special way. Scientists want to use them to build quantum computers. The problem is making those flaws exactly the way you want them. The team figured out how: by choosing the right kind of particles to bombard with!

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

💙 My cover in ASC Nano 20th anniversary issue! ✨ Research showed that when tiny particles moving at incredible speed pass through a material, they leave behind narrow damaged tunnels inside it. Knowing how materials handle this kind of hit is important for better #nuclear reactors and #spacecraft.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

New cover in Advanced Functional Materials! 🤖🩸✨ Here we showed a tiny "soft" #robot, developed by Hakan Ceylan from Mayo Clinic Research. The robot is guided by #magnets from outside the body, traveling through a blood vessel to deliver treatment exactly where it's needed and without any harm.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Does a journal cover actually help your research reach more people? We decided to find out and published the results in Journal of Scientometric Research. Full paper: 'How Cover Selection Boosts Article Reach' - open access: www.jscires.org/article/15/1... We would love to hear what you think.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

💜 The research is about two similar #molecules self-assembled into completely different structures: one forms twisted #nanofibers, the other spreads into flat #membrane-like patches. Just a small difference in their core structure changes everything about how they organize. 🔗 doi.org/10.1021/acs....

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

We just got back from AACR 2026. Met so many brilliant scientists and clinicians working on the cutting edge of cancer research, and had some really inspiring conversations about how visualization can help bring their work to life.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Sharing one of our favorite #covers! ✨🔬 This is the December 2025 special issue of Optics & Photonics News. They are annually showcasing the most exciting optics research of the year. We love that our illustration for Judith Su gets to be the face of it 💙

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

New illustration for Nature paper - MitoCatch🧠✨ Some neurological diseases damage #mitochondria, tiny power stations inside our cells. Temurkhan Ayupov figured out how to deliver healthy mitochondria directly to the diseased cells, like a transplant.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

🎨 We are heading to San Diego for #AACR2026 - find us at Booth #3639 (April 19 - 22)! Cancer researcher or science communicator? Come say hi.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

New cover in Advanced Sensor Research! ✨ Researchers built a tiny disposable sensor that can detect a biomarker for oral diseases directly from saliva. The sensor works by molecular imprinting. Congratulations to Alexander Shokurov, Max Nobre Supelnic, and Carlo Menon! 💙 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/adsr...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

In academia, the main result is a paper, nowadays mostly digital text and figures 🖥️ . It represents enormous effort, but it's hard to feel it as something truly achieved... That's why we love sending prints as something the researchers can hold and actually feel as the result of their work 😊 ❤️

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

#AdvancedScience Cover! 🧠✨ This one is about the role of cell #membrane in brain cells #communication. The team used ultra-sensitive #sensors to watch single neurotransmitter molecules interact with membranes in real time. They observed that some molecules stick around, some just pass through.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

👁️ New cover!✨ Did you know that #nanoparticles are used for the drug delivery inside of a human eye? 👀 (Honestly, I knew only about the eye drops 🤭) Scientists can now also use a #laser to steer nanoparticles to exactly the right place inside the eye. This makes drug delivery even more precise!

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

🩷My new cover illustrates a carbon nanotube surrounded by blood proteins forming a “biomolecular corona”. Basically, researchers used it as a molecular fingerprint of the tumour and its whole environment to detect the tumor. Beautiful concept, beautiful science - everything we like!

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

During the ACS conference, we received so much positive feedback from our customers 🥰 We are very grateful for trusting us to bring the ideas into reality! We always love to express our gratitude by sending the cover print as a gift. Ph: @edelplopez.bsky.social with a print we sent as a gift ❤️

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

🌱Our #NewCover depicts funny insects recorded by a camera for identification and monitoring by a new AI tool 📸 🐛 @edelplopez.bsky.social from @ulaval.ca emphasize that #agriculture must balance effective crop protection with reducing the environmental damage caused by traditional pesticide use.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

If you are at #ACS this week in Atlanta - come say hi! 👋 We are at Booth 1103 and would love to show you what we have been working on. Also... we have amazing tote bags, keychains, and stickers 😄 Hope to see you there! 🥳 #ACSAtlanta #SciComm #sciart #acs #chemistry

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

🤩 our new cover! The cover features the review on how liquid–liquid phase separation can boost #catalysis in both natural and engineered systems. In living cells, it creates flexible, membrane-free structures that improve control the surroundings and behavior of #enzymes.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

💙 Our New Cover❤️ Inside the developed microdroplets, oxygen is reduced in a way that enables the formation of metal hydroxide materials with much lower energy input. This approach makes it easier to produce a wide range of high-performance catalysts for energy conversion and storage technologies.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

❤️ My New Cover! Chen Du, Victoria Cotham and Shunhai Wang from @regeneron.com created a new automated measurement method that can precisely analyze these complex virus–antibody systems, helping scientists check their quality and composition more easily.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

🤖 Can you submit an AI-generated image to a scientific journal? Not always - and the rules depend heavily on the journal. In this article we looked at how journals handle AI-generated visuals. www.cell.com/matter/abstr... Curious to hear your thoughts. #ScientificPublishing #AI #SciArt

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

🐛On the cover: simple yellow mealworm larva (juvenile stage of the beetle) inspired Monika Gupta and Goran Stojanovic to design biodegradable electronic substrates! 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/adsu...

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

🧭 Our new cover shows how #hydrogel materials can be tuned by balancing two components, illustrated as fluid weights on a clock controlled by a researcher’s hand. By adjusting the ratio of oxidized and non-oxidized #hyaluronan, the study creates hydrogels with controlled mechanical properties.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

My New Cover for @ScienceTM 🧬🤩 The cover illustrates a #CART cell (blue) recognizing and attacking a malignant B cell (pink) with a specific receptor called IGHV4-34. By targeting only these harmful cells, the therapy aims to avoid wiping out the entire B-cell population.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

This week I had the honor of giving my first in-person talk at Columbia University on how researchers can improve the design of scientific figures and covers. I’m very grateful to Dr. Dmitri Basov for the kind invitation and to everyone who attended, asked questions,and joined the discussion.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

✨ 🟪 Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) - crystal-like materials full of tiny pores that can trap hydrogen molecules like nanoscale storage tanks. The cover visualizes hydrogen molecules flowing into the intricate MOF lattice.

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ella-maru.bsky.social @ella-maru.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

✨ New Cover! Hurray✨ This cover features a new way of portable inhaled nitric oxide delivery designed to make therapy of #cystic_fibrosis safer and more accessible 🫁 I illustrated released NO acting against P. aeruginosa biofilms, a bacterial burden in cystic fibrosis patients.

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