Join us for a powerful evening of art, science, and storytelling with a screening of curated clips from See Memory, the Telly Award–winning, hand-painted documentary by filmmaker and visual artist Viviane Silvera. Composed of over 30,000 individually painted frames, the film animates the inner workings of memory, trauma, and healing—bridging breakthroughs in neuroscience with the emotional depth of lived experience.
Clips from See Memory will be interspersed with a discussion moderated by Susan Bookheimer, PhD. that will explore how memory is both science and story—and how the creative process can illuminate pathways to resilience, reflection, and growth.
Panelists:
Viviane Silvera, Director and Visual Artist
Sophia Michelen, Producer, See Memory
Dr. Felicia Knaul, Global Health Advocate & Economist
Dr. Susan Bookheimer, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCLA
Susan Bookheimer, PhD
Susan Bookheimer is Clinical Neuropsychologist and Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Department of Psychology. She specializes in functional brain imaging with PET and functional MRI. Her work has focused on the organization of language and memory in the brain, in healthy adults and children and in neurologic conditions and developmental disorders. Recent work focuses on understanding the neural basis of social communication deficits in autism using functional MRI, encompassing both verbal and non-verbal communication, and focusing on emotional aspects of social comprehension.
Dr. Bookheimer also maintains active research programs imaging dyslexia, Alzheimer’s disease, and pre-surgical planning in patients with brain lesions such as tumors, arterio-venous malformations, and epilepsy. Dr. Bookheimer received her Bachelors degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1982, and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University in 1989. She performed a postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before coming to UCLA in 1993.
Felicia Knaul, PhD.
Dr. Felicia Marie Knaul, the associate of the chancellor at UCLA, is internationally recognized for her transformative and translational research in global health, health systems and health economics, focused on reducing inequities. She is also a professor of medicine and serves as a senior advisor to the dean of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as a senior advisor to the president of UCLA Health. Her work has influenced policy and improved the condition of at-risk populations in low and middle-income countries, particularly in Latin America. She founded a Mexican civil society organization; spearheaded multiple global networks of researchers, higher education leaders, advocacy organizations, policymakers, and multi-sectoral policy initiatives; and has authored some 350 academic and policy publications.
A woman who has lived through breast cancer, Dr. Knaul founded and serves as president of Tómatelo a Pecho, a Mexican non-profit agency originally focused on breast cancer which has now expanded its mandate to include women’s health and health system strengthening. Since its founding in 2008, the organization has trained thousands of primary care personnel using novel techniques. She chronicled her own cancer journey and those of other women in the books Tómatelo a Pecho and Beauty without the Breast.Dr. Knaul’s wide-ranging research has focused on violence against women and children, access to pain relief and palliative care, cancer, health systems and reform, health financing, women and health, poverty and inequity, female labor force participation and at-risk children and youth.She has put in place and led multiple global research networks. Dr. Knaul currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on Gender-based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People, and The Lancet Commission on Cancer And Health Systems. From 2014 to 2017, she founded and co-chaired The Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief and lead-authored the 2017 report Alleviating the access abyss in palliative care and pain relief – an imperative of universal health coverage. From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Knaul contributed to The Lancet Commission on Women and Health as a leading co-author, and more recently served on the Lancet Commissions on the Value of Death (2022) and Breast Cancer (2024). Dr. Knaul has also led a series of health policy papers in The Lancet spanning two decades of health reform in Mexico, most recently in 2023 covering the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and originating from The Lancet’s 2006 Mexico series, which she chaired. Dr. Knaul also played a leadership role in establishing the Covid-19 Latam Observatory, which brought together a group of researchers from eight Latin American countries to collect and analyze data on COVID-19 and sub-national policymaking.
Sophia Michelen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, and global health advocate whose work spans the intersections of memory, identity, trauma, and justice. With a background in neuroscience and public health, Sophia’s career has taken her across more than 80 countries, from emergency operations with the United Nations World Food Programme in the Middle East to global polio eradication efforts and strategic communications at UNICEF; from health policy reform and microfinance programs supporting women in East Africa to cancer advocacy with Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Her visual storytelling—featured in National Geographic Traveller, Forbes, Teen Vogue, and Ms. Magazine, and exhibited at Harvard University and the International Center of Photography—is driven by empathy, depth, and an unflinching commitment to truth. From documenting illegal gold mines in Ghana to crossing the Arctic Circle by dogsled, Sophia’s field experience is as extreme as it is expansive. Most recently, she was named a Researcher-in-Residence on an Arctic expedition, where she is studying the cultural and psychological impacts of climate change on Inuit communities.
Sophia is the producer of See Memory, a Telly Award–winning animated documentary that translates the neuroscience of trauma and memory into visual art. Her work bridges disciplines—science, public policy, and creative expression—to educate, heal, and provoke understanding. Sophia also co-hosts the PBS travel series America: The Land We Live In, exploring the layered and often overlooked histories woven into the American landscape. She holds a Master’s in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and has served on the Tufts University Alumni Council for over 15 years. A former board member of UN Women USA (New York), she continues to champion gender equity and global health access through story-driven advocacy and fieldwork.
A lifelong advocate for equity and inclusion, she remains committed to advancing women’s representation in global science, exploration, and media. Based in New York City, Sophia brings curiosity, compassion, and a deep commitment to justice to every story she tells—believing that the way we remember shapes the way we care.
Viviane Silvera
Director, Painter, and Creator of See Memory
Viviane Silvera is a Telly Award–winning filmmaker and visual artist whose work bridges the worlds of neuroscience, psychology, and fine art to explore how memory shapes—and reshapes—our sense of self. Her acclaimed film See Memory—crafted from over 30,000 hand-painted frames—translates scientific insights into poetic visual storytelling, illustrating how trauma fragments memory and how healing is made possible through presence, imagination, and narrative.
Silvera’s work has been exhibited internationally for over two decades, including at Art Basel Miami, Berlin Art Week, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her moving image and painted works are held in the permanent collections of Vanderbilt University, the Clinton Presidential Library, Duke University, and others. Her practice has been supported by institutions such as the National Academy of Fine Arts and has been featured in Authority Magazine as part of their “Inspirational Women of the Speaking Circuit” series.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Brazil, Silvera holds a BS in Psychology and Political Science from Tufts University and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She is the founder of On Art, an interdisciplinary studio dedicated to exploring memory, trauma, and transformation through hand-painted film.