Saraina grew up in Milton, Wisconsin and graduated in 2018 with her bachelors in fine art with biology and French minors from Carroll University. She learned about medical illustration from a retired medical illustrator who substituted at her high school, then based her undergraduate degree around going into the field.

Saraina enjoys illustrating organisms that are spooky and a little gross. Deep sea creatures, the bioluminescent kind or the ones that never develop eyes because they’ll literally never see light are particularly cool. She is also a fan of parasitoids, like the Braconid wasps, because of their unique life cycles. Outside of organisms, she enjoys the challenge of visualizing and reconstructing molecules from homology models. On the other end of the size scale, she works with big data to effectively visualize large quantities of data in a way that is accessible and easy to understand. Her true passion lies in programming, be it web development, game design, e-learning design, or data visualization, AR or VR. She loves the challenge of meticulously picking through code, trouble-shooting errors, and of course the god-like feeling of solving a particularly difficult programming challenge. She is fascinated with how interactive learning principles can be integrated effectively in science-based learning, whether it be for patient education, medical professional education, general science education, or to inform a lay-audience.

In her free time she enjoys cooking, especially learning new cuisines. Her hobbies include drawing things that are not-work related, writing fiction, fashion and costuming. Saraina can always be found with her brightly color-coordinated planner, a cup of coffee, and probably an extremely fashionable outfit.

Faces of BVIS | Student Bio