There are good reasons why they changed the way labs display science... but I personally don't like it much.

This mod reverts the lab's alt mode icons to pretty close to how they looked in 1.1. They're actually being rendered by Lua, so they may not be quite as good for your UPS, but for a normal sized base it isn't going to matter. Each lab is updated every 10-30 ticks (depending on how many labs you have) which is quick enough you won't notice but is far better performance than running every tick. Anyway, if you've got some million-SPM megabase you don't really need this mod since you're probably using every science pack and it's going to look the same regardless.