Vital Mind Media logo

Vital Mind Media

We design unique digital media for science, health, and education.

Contact us
 

About us

Vital Mind Media is a San Francisco-based digital agency that collaborates with leading researchers and communications teams in academia and the biotech industry to create digital media which engages people through storytelling and experience design. We are designers, developers, writers, researchers, scientists, strategists, and multimedia production experts with decades of experience in science communication.

 

Featured work

A selection of interactive games, apps, and media.
attune
We worked with clinical experts and cancer survivors to adapt a validated Cognitive Behavioral Therapy program for anxiety and depression into a self-guided mobile app. The resulting product from Blue Note Therapeutics, attune, received the FDA’s breakthrough designation and met its primary endpoint in a randomized controlled trial.
Close Next
Eterna
As part of a development team based at Stanford University, we manage the design and development of this citizen science game which challenges players to create RNA molecules for medical research by solving Sudoku-like puzzles. The RNAs are synthesized and tested at a lab at Stanford, and the data is returned to players so they can iterate on their own - and each other’s - designs.
Close Next Prev
Serein
Working closely with therapists at Memorial Sloan Kettering, cancer survivors, and Blue Note Therapeutics, we designed a digital intervention for anxiety and depression in advanced cancer patients. Guided by a conversational AI-based character, the game-like experience lets users journey as a bird through a mythical landscape, along with a group of companions, to explore and restore their sense of meaning in life.
Close Next Prev
We're not getting any younger... yet.
We produced this podcast from the Buck Institute in which celebrated scientist Gordon Lithgow explores cutting-edge research and ideas on aging with some of the brightest minds in the field.
Close Next Prev
CRISPR-3D
This unique app displays CRISPR protein systems using augmented reality to allow students, educators, and scientists to investigate the 3D structure of these increasingly important but often complex biological mechanisms. The app includes a feature that displays 3D models using custom playing cards designed by the Innovative Genomics Institute.
Close Next Prev
SuperStruct
Collaborating with scientists at UT Austin, we designed and produced this new citizen science game which challenges players to fit 3D models of proteins together to form protein complexes. Players then share their solutions with researchers to collaboratively find the optimal configuration. Each puzzle represents a different biological mechanism important to human health.
Close Next Prev
Mantra Bio
We designed and developed a new website for this biotech startup focused on exosome therapeutics, including an explainer video and a unique design language.
Close Next Prev
Phage Invaders
Working closely with UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute, we designed and produced this mobile game which teaches kids (and adults!) about CRISPR gene editing. Players defend their bacterial cellular home from invading viral phages by cutting injected viral DNA before it can make more copies of phages.
Close Next Prev
Buck Academy
We designed and produced this free online course about the biology of aging from the Buck Institute. The web-based course includes video, slideshows, animations, and interactive exercises to engage students in understanding the relationship between aging and disease, as well as information on how to avoid illness as we age.
Close Prev
 

Our Clients