Illustration on a yellow background: a floating eyeball with black eyelashes wearing a funnel shaped black hole hat with orbiting stars.

Hello! I'm an independent artist & designer who enjoys creating scientifically-informed & fantastical visuals.

Collaborating with researchers, science publications and others globally. Currently at Springer Nature. Previously, as the establishing Art Director of Quanta Magazine, my work included developing the publication's visual identity, directing and creating feature art, and more →

Selected work

More:  2D  |  3D
Crop of a stylized illustration of figures silhouetted against a bright night sky, catching stars in large glass bottles. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Symmetry magazine.
Time-Domain AstronomyAstronomy | Symmetry | 2025
Illustration of a black hole with an accretion disk and jets — an AGN. Graphical electrons are spiraling around in the jets. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.
Star Death InfographicAstrophysics | SciAm | 2025
Crop: Stylized, conceptual illustration of the cosmic dawn: a period roughly 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies started to form. These cosmic structures pour out of a funnel representing spacetime. The funnel, in turn, arises from a bright crescent with a starburst, which resembles a sun rising behind a planet in space. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.
Cosmic DawnAstrophysics | SciAm | 2025
Crops of an illustration arranged in a triptych: Cosmic history, focusing on the dark ages (when the early universe was shrouded in darkness), cosmic dawn (when the first stars and galaxies began to form), and reionization (when UV radiation from the first stars ionized the surrounding hydrogen, making the universe transparent — and therefore the light of cosmic structures visible to us and our instruments, millions of years later). Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.
Cosmic Timeline InfographicAstrophysics | SciAm | 2025
Crop: stylized illustration of an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus, e.g. quasar) inside a cauldron in space. Art by Olena Shmahalo for BBC Science Focus.
Ingredients for AGNsAstrophysics | BBC SF | 2025
Crop of an illustration: A stylized scene showing neutrinos passing through a teacup. A graphical magnifier behind the cup shows events at the atomic level (exaggerated, not to scale). Neutrinos are often called 'ghost particles': despite their large quantities (trillions pass through us every second), they rarely interact with matter. To interact with an atom, a neutrino must actually hit its nucleus — a tiny cluster of protons and neutrons in a vast, empty space. The odds are incredibly low; artistic license was taken for this illustration to show more interactions than are likely to happen. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Symmetry Magazine.
Neutrino TeaParticle Physics | Symmetry | 2025
Crop of a stylized illustration of an autumnal scene at the famous Institute Pond at the Institute for Advanced Study. Silhouettes of people around the pond observe a strange event in the dark, star-filled water: two orbiting black holes create ripples, symbolizing gravitational waves. Art by Olena Shmahalo for The Institute Letter.
Gravitational WavesAstrophysics | IAS | 2024
Crop of a stylized 3D illustration – a particle beam passing through a polarizing waveplate. Art by Olena Shmahalo for The Quantum Atlas / University of Maryland.
Quantum AtlasPhysics | 3D Animation | UMD | 2024
Crop of a painting: Inspired by antique nautical maps depicting monsters in unknown waters, a worn celestial map shows dark matter styled as a draconic serpent wrapping around galaxies. (Dark matter is like a gravitational glue that binds galaxy clusters together, while dark energy pushes them apart.) Imagery and labels on objects around the map (books, papers, photos) suggest dark matter candidates like axions, WIMPs and black holes. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American.
Here be (Dark Matter) Monsters!Astrophysics | SciAm | 2024
A semi-abstract 3D artwork depicting subatomic and astronomical physics. Crop of the left panel, illustrating the topic *Decipher the Quantum Realm* from the 2023 P5 report: Particles and oscillating neutrinos bursting out of a bright source and flying through a light cone containing the Higgs / 'Mexican hat' potential. Art by Olena Shmahalo for U.S. Particle Physics.
P5: The Quantum UniversePhysics | P5 Report | 2023
Thumbnail: Digital painting of a starship flying into colorful nebulae. This generation ship's body is shaped like a maple seed, intersected by two large wheels that would generate artificial gravity along their interior. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Symmetry Magazine.
YggdrasilAstrophysics | Symmetry | 2024
Painted portrait illustration of physicist Ettore Majorana, dramatically lit and partially in shadow, with anyons / Majorana fermions orbiting around him. Art by Olena Shmahalo for Science Magazine / AAAS.
MajoranaPhysics | AAAS Science | 2023
Stylized illustration of six animals. Top-left: A Tyrannosaurus rex surveys the others from behind ferns & foliage. Top-right: A manatee holds a potion bottle as a wave curls around & over him. Middle: A Velociraptor peeks over the top of a graphical, pink TV displaying a beach scene; its claw grips one edge. A Ragdoll cat & puffin relax on a cushion in front of the TV. Bottom-right: Standing amidst ferns & cycads, a huge Stegosaurus looks up at the other creatures.
AnimalsSFF | 2023
3D renders of brass jewelry: lanterns, rings with a wave-particle duality design, and an infinity loop band. Original designs © Olena Shmahalo / Nature in Theory
Wearable 3D ArtPhysics | Personal | 2021-23
Painted 3D sculpture of a girl with brown hair wearing a witch hat. The top of the hat is a cutaway diorama of a landscape: a shepherd's hut on a hill. Hand-lettering around the girl says
A Hat Full of SkyFantasy | Realtime 3D | Personal | 2023
Stylized painting of neutrinos traveling from an AGN or supernova and plunging into a dark blue sea, producing Cherenkov radiation (conical blue light) underwater.
Extragalactic NeutrinosPhysics | Symmetry | 2023
Triptych: 3D art of a pulsar shooting out colorful jets, stars & galaxies in a petri dish showing the evolution of the universe, & planet Earth surrounded by telescopes, pulsars, & binary black hole systems.
NANOGrav AstrophysicsPhysics | NANOGrav | 2022
Photo of the cover of IAS: The Institute Letter. Featuring art of a black hole laboratory in a retro-futuristic style.
Black Hole LabsPhysics | IAS Cover | 2022
Painting of a gold armillary sphere on a beige background, containing a blue galaxy and a spherical black hole at its center. Gears are faintly visible beneath the galaxy.
Black Hole GyroscopePhysics | Quanta | 2022
Photos of a Scientific American cover. Title: Black Hole Mysteries Solved. Featuring 3D art on a blue background: Inside a black hourglass, galaxies fall into one end of a white wormhole and out the other.
Black Hole Info ParadoxPhysics | SciAm Cover | 2022
Scientific American cover: How COVID Changed the World
COVID Changed the WorldBiology | SciAm Cover | 2022
Art on a yellow background: a floating eyeball with black eyelashes wearing a funnel shaped black hole hat with orbiting stars.
The ObserverSFF | Realtime 3D | Personal | 2022
Quanta Magazine logo on a black background
Quanta MagazineDirection & Design | 2014-21
An abstract, iridescent visual created by millions of colorful particles flying through space.
The Proton SeaPhysics | Quanta | 2021
3D sculpture of clustered black spheres (representing black holes) cradled in the crevices of iridescent, cloud-like forms.
Black Holes = Dark MatterPhysics | Quanta | 2020
Fantasy painting: a white tower made of blocks with mathematical symbols, floating in the sky.
Gödel's TowerMath | Quanta | 2020

© Olena Shmahalo