Bevil Conway

Bevil Conway is an artist and a neuroscientist, and an expert on the neuroscience of color.

Dr. Conway is a senior investigator at the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Mental Health. Conway completed undergraduate training in Biology at McGill University, a couple of years of medical school and a PhD in Neurobiology at Harvard University, and a Junior Fellowship in the Harvard Society of Fellows working with David Hubel. After graduate school, Conway helped get the Kathmandu University Medical School off the ground, serving as the Director of Education for Physiology and Pathophysiology. He returned to the Boston area to take up a post at Wellesley College, working with a team to start the Neuroscience Department. After teaching undergraduate neuroscience and art for about a decade and rising to the rank of Associate Professor, his lab moved for a couple of years to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, before moving to Washington D.C. to join the NIH. 

Research in Dr. Conway’s lab aims to understand the normal brain processes by which physical signals that impinge on the sensory apparatus (eyes, ears) are transformed into perceptions, thoughts, and actions. Conway has been especially invested in developing color as a model system.

Bevil’s artwork artwork explores a range of topics and themes including the limits of visualization, the nature of representation, and concepts of process, beauty and the sublime. He works in glass-and-silk, etching, watercolor, metal point, and oil paint, and occasionally site-specific installation. His work is in the Boston Public Library, the Fogg University Art Rental Collection, the N.I.H. Building 35 Public Art Collection, and many private collections. He lives in Washington DC with his spouse, ten-year old twins, chameleon (Karen), canary (Jeremy), and dog (Franklin Fauci Wambsgans).