Catherine Baker is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Birmingham City University (BCU) in the UK. Based at Birmingham School of Art where she co-leads the Material Encounters Research Cluster https://www.bcu.ac.uk/art/research/material-encounters As an artist/researcher her early PhD work involved working with neuroscientists with whom she shared an interest in the neurobiology of the eye. Baker’s research involved investigating the active process of drawing as a physical and perceptual encounter analysing eye movements in landscape drawing. Her interest in this encounter as a phenomenological consideration remains although, since being invited to undertake a residency at a Clinical Research Imaging Centre in 2010 her research began to focus on the interface between patient and clinician and the diagnostic image. Initially, focusing on the implications of being able to ‘look under the skin’, she is now leading an ambitious multi-partnered interdisciplinary project investigating environment and embodiment and health/well-being in relation to Adolescent Scoliosis. Her work continues to investigate the experience of clinical diagnosis and illness as a disruption of the human ‘being’ rather than the failure of the biological ‘body’. This vital work explores the profound sense of loss experienced by the alienated self in illness. Baker work continues to be centrally concerned with the interface between Art and Science and her work has been widely exhibited and published internationally. She is currently leading a Special Section for world-leading journal Leonardo with Neuropsychologist Professor Iain Gilchrist on the process of interdisciplinary collaboration across the Arts, Sciences and Humanities.