A new exhibit on display at the Center of Excellence Building highlights the artistic elements of scientific research at Binghamton University.

The seventh-annual Art of Science competition received 56 entries, says Martha Terry, creative services manager in the Office of Research Advancement and coordinator of the contest. She selected 11 images for the new show, which will remain in the COE Atrium through early 2024.

“I was impressed once again with the range of entries we saw in this year’s competition,” Terry says. “Researchers in the life sciences continue to capture such stunning images with microscopes, and we also have a number of extremely talented photographers on campus.”

Members of the campus community submitted images in two categories: The World Around Us, in which the subject is visible to the naked eye; and Visualizing the Unseen, captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see.

The top prize, Best in Show and First Place in The World Around Us, went to Jessica Fridrich, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering. Her entry, titled “Celestial Cotton Candy,” featured violent weather in the Southwest. “Monsoons can be dangerous and destructive as well as awe inspiring and outright beautiful,” she wrote in her entry. “I am a researcher. My job is to look for new problems and open people’s eyes. My photography does the same as I search for new compositions and ways to portray remote places.”

Second Place in that category went to Pavel Masek, assistant professor of biological sciences, for an image he captured with his cell phone at home. The striking photograph shows two fruit flies harvesting nectar from a bee that was killed by a spider.

Third Place honors went to master’s student Olivia Lopez for an image titled “A Queen is Born.” “A queen bee has found her first drone to mate with on her nuptial flight,” she wrote in her entry. “A rare sight to see outside of a human-kept hive, this pair was on a twig on the ground of the campus Nature Preserve main trail, and safely relocated.”

Ling Wang, a lecturer in biomedical engineering, took home top prize in the Visualizing the Unseen category for an image and 3D rendering of breast cancer cells.
Second Place went to an image titled “Hippocampus Blues” submitted by Meredith Gamble, a doctoral candidate in psychology. Third Place went to “Mr. Wrinkle’s Sad Smile,” entered by Ash Spina, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering.

This year’s judges were Evan Henderson, creative marketing specialist, Harpur College of Arts and Sciences; Jeffrey Mativetsky, associate professor of physics, applied physics and astronomy and director of the Materials Science and Engineering Program; Blessin McFarlane, an English major and a member of the Class of 2023; and Meera Sampath, associate dean of research, Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science. They evaluated entries based on artistic merit as well as scientific significance.

Each of them presented a Judge’s Choice selection. Those honors went to “Levitating Gel Donut,” entered by Kirsten Krick, a graduate student in biomedical engineering; “Dermal Nebula,” also entered by Spina; “Fruit Flies Stealing Nectar from a Killed Bee,” submitted by Masek; and “Celestial Cotton Candy,” entered by Fridrich.

The contest, sponsored by the Office of Research Advancement and the S3IP Center of Excellence, was part of Research Days festivities.

The annual contest, organized by the Office of Research Advancement, invites members of the campus community to share exceptional images that are connected to their research or scholarly work in some way.

This year, there were nearly 50 entries in two categories: The World Around Us, for images in which the subject is visible to the naked eye; and Visualizing the Unseen, for images captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see, such as microscopes, or interpretations of scientific information.

“It was exciting to have representation from students, staff and faculty in this year’s entries,” says Martha Terry, creative services manager in the Office of Research Advancement and coordinator of the competition. “We saw a lot of variety in the types of images that were submitted, too.”

Graduate student Niranjana Dhandapani entered an image titled “Strength of Our Skin” and took home First Place in the Visualizing the Unseen category as well as Best in Show.

Dhandapani’s entry, which looks at first like an abstract sea of red waves, is a microscopic image of proteinaceous collagen fiber bundles within the skin’s dermal layer. They were stained with a fluorescent Picro-sirius dye. “When skin is stretched,” she says, “its biomechanical behavior depends on the overall alignment of these crucial stress-bearing fibers.”

She received a pair of AirPods as her prize.

First Place in The World Around Us category went to Junpeng Lai, a graduate research assistant in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He entered a striking photograph of a spider titled “Spiders Can Use Their Orb-web to Hear.”

Three additional entries were honored as Judge’s Choice Selections:

• Carmela Buono, a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences, was recognized for a photograph titled Moss and Mushroom Macro-landscape. The macro image features a bright green, moss-covered log with several light brown mushroom caps in a deciduous forest in the northeastern United States.
• Claire Horn, project director in the Public Archaeology Facility, was honored for an image titled Excavating in Floodplain Silt. Archaeologists typically conduct controlled excavations with set dimensions to more easily compare findings from different locations across a site, she says. This photograph shows work conducted in 2021 on the Susquehanna River floodplain.
• Lynn Terry, a graduate student from the Chemistry Department, was recognized for an image titled Under the Lens: Gold/Nanocellulose Membranes. The image, captured with a confocal Raman microscope, features gold nanoparticle / nanocellulose thin-film membranes in an impressive array of colors.

Images are evaluated based on scientific significance, originality and artistic and visual impact.

This year’s judges were Kirsten Prior, assistant professor of biological sciences; Marcus Newton, photo specialist/digital technician in the Department of Art and Design; and Lorin Miller, a member of the Class of 2022.

The S3IP Center of Excellence and the Division of Research co-sponsor the competition, now in its sixth year. This year’s entries are featured in a video and in an exhibit in the atrium of the Center of Excellence Building.

“We were able to have a reception for the show again this year,” Terry says, “and it was wonderful to have a good turnout for the exhibit and be able to see the entrants talk with each other. Some people told me they think about the competition while they’re doing research, and I’m already looking forward to seeing next year’s entries.”

The contest, organized by the Office of Research Advancement and co-sponsored by the S3IP Center of Excellence, offers an opportunity to share the beauty of science through photographs and images that describe some aspect of research captured visually.

This is the fifth year our office has sponsored the competition and I continue to be impressed by the images submitted,” says Martha Terry, creative services manager and contest organizer. “As the entries come in, it is exciting to see the fields of study represented and the creativity that is exhibited by each entrant. I am pleased that enthusiasm for this competition continues and each year I look forward to the next.”

Images were scored in two categories: The World Around Us, featuring images in which the subject is visible to the naked eye, and Visualizing the Unseen, for images captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see.

This year’s judges were Yan Sun, manager, Health Sciences Core Facility; Surinder Kahai, associate professor, School of Management; and Kirk Van Zandbergen, photographer and owner of Van Zandbergen Photography. They evaluated entries based on scientific significance, originality and artistic and visual impact.

An image titled “Blue Flame” by Jessica Fridrich, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, won first place in The World Around Us as well as Best in Show. She will receive a new iPad.

“The early southwest settlers had to cope with many challenges, one of them being water shortages,” Fridrich wrote in a caption that accompanied her entry. “White Pocket, the result of an ancient landslide depicted in the picture during a dramatic sunset, provided this source during the monsoons through natural depressions in sandstone.”

First place in Visualizing the Unseen went to an image titled “Label-Free Imaging of Water in Cartilage Tissue” by doctoral candidate Yuhao Yuan and Fake Lu, assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

“Water has important biological functions in the tissue and organs of living organisms,” they wrote in their caption. “Using a lab-built stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy, the distribution of water (pseudocolor cyan) and cartilage (yellow) in an intact mouse ear tissue can be directly seen at a subcellular level without the use of chemical labeling.”

The two first place images, along with a selection of other entries from the 2020 and 2021 competitions, are on exhibit in the lobby of the Center of Excellence Building at the Innovative Technologies Complex.

Kirk Butler, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering, worked with undergraduate Alondra Osorno on the entry that took Best in Show and First Place in the Visualizing the Unseen Category. Here’s how Butler described the image, titled “Migration into Mesenchyme:” “Heart epithelial cells (nuclei in blue), grown from stem cells, migrate outward from a central aggregate mass and transition into fibroblasts. The presence of smooth muscle actin (red) within a pronounced actin cytoskeleton (green) suggests these are contractile myofibroblasts, which play an important role in heart wound repair and fibrosis.”

Butler and Osorno created the image while doing research in the lab of Tracy Hookway, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering.

Jessica Fridrich, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, won First Place in The World Around Us Category for her photograph titled “Visceral.” That means the Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science can claim both winning entries this year.

Here’s how Fridrich described her submission: “White Pocket in Arizona is the result of an ancient landslide. In this photograph, the amorphous formations contrast with a dramatic illumination due to sunlight scattered on smoke from a nearby wildfire.”

Martha Terry, creative services manager in the Office of Research Advancement, coordinated the competition. She notes that advances in imaging technology and tools mean that scientists have an increased ability to generate exciting data as well as to create compelling works of art. This contest offers an opportunity to share the beauty of science through photographs and images that describe some aspect of research captured visually.

“I’m excited and impressed with the vast variety of images this year,” Terry says. “It brings attention to the creativity of our campus research community.”

Images were entered in one of two categories and then evaluated based on scientific significance, originality and artistic and visual impact. In The World Around Us, researchers entered images in which the subject is visible to the naked eye. Visualizing the Unseen includes images captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see, such as microscopes and telescopes, or models of scientific phenomena or processes or interpretations of scientific information.

This year’s judges were Jocelyn Bailey, account director, Idea Kraft; Steve Czarnecki, associate director, S3IP; Madhuri Govindaraju, UI designer/developer, University Communications and Marketing; Jake Kerr, undergraduate student; Claire Kovacs, curator of collections and exhibitions, Binghamton University Art Museum; and Alexsa Silva, director of instruction and outreach, Chemistry Department.

All of the entries are featured in this video:

Advances in imaging technology and tools mean that scientists have an increased ability to generate exciting data as well as to create compelling works of art. This contest, organized by Martha Terry from the Office of Research Advancement, offers an opportunity to share the beauty of science through photographs and images that describe some aspect of research captured visually.

The campus community was invited to submit images in three categories:

• The World Around Us: images in which the subject is visible to the naked eye
• Visualizing the Unseen: images captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see, such as microscopes and telescopes
• Imagining Science: images that depict objects too small to be visualized directly, models of scientific phenomena or processes or interpretations of scientific information

First place for Imagining Science went to Congrui Grace Jin, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, for her entry titled “Meshed Grains.”

She wrote: To investigate creep rupture of high-temperature components such as gas turbines and steam boilers, our team developed a mesh generator that can generate meshed grains of polycrystalline materials. The grains can be non-uniform in size and randomly distributed. Each grain is meshed using quadratic triangular grain elements; cohesive elements are added at grain boundaries. The figure is generated by MATLAB and rendered by POV-Ray. This project, titled “High-Temperature Creep Failure of Additively Manufactured Metals,” is sponsored by University of Science and Technology Beijing.

About three dozen images were evaluated based on scientific significance, originality and artistic and visual impact.

This year’s judges were Hiroki Sayama, director of the Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems and professor in the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering; John Tagg, SUNY distinguished professor of art history; Anju Sharma, senior scientist in the Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory; undergraduate Rebecca Kiss, photo editor of Pipe Dream; and alumnus and professional photographer Wasim Ahmad.

Jin, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, submitted an image called “Plates” that featured petri dishes of different species of fungi. She and her colleagues are exploring whether fungi could be used as a self-healing agent to promote calcium mineral precipitation to fill the cracks in concrete.

The image took first place in “The World Around Us,” a category featuring subjects visible to the naked eye, and was named Best in Show as well.

Students, faculty and staff also competed in two other categories: “Visualizing the Unseen,” images captured with the use of optics that extend beyond what the eye can see, such as microscopes and telescopes; and “Imagining Science,” images that depict objects too small to be visualized directly, models of scientific phenomena or processes or interpretations of scientific information.

The second-annual competition was coordinated by Martha Terry, creative services manager in the Office of Research Advancement. Winners were announced during Binghamton Research Days.

Second- and third-place recognition in “The World Around Us” also went to faculty members: Chengbin Deng, assistant professor of geography, took second with “Nighttime Binghamton University Campus,” while Jessica Fridrich, professor of electrical and computer engineering, took third place with “Eclipse.”

In “Imagining science,” first place went to Alex J. Feingold, professor of mathematical sciences, for “Amzakoe Genus 3 Triple Link,” while Sara Grills took both second and third place for stratigraphy images related to her work for the Public Archaeology Facility, where she is a project manager.

“Visualizing the Unseen,” meanwhile, was dominated by an undergraduate who designed his own major. First- and second-place honors went to Zachariah P. Liebmann, who entered images he took while studying organic matter and how it presents itself under ultraviolet light.

Third place in that category went to graduate student Tong Yang and her mentor, Jeffrey Mativetsky, assistant professor of physics. Their image, “Alien Tunnels,” was captured with an optical microscope and featured crystals formed by depositing and drying an “ink” composed of organic semiconducting molecules dissolved in a solvent.

This year’s judges were Surinder Kahai, associate professor, School of Management; Blazo Kovacevic, assistant professor of art and design; Matt Mendelsohn ’85, photojournalist, portrait photographer and writer; Kevin E. Paredes ’18, photography editor, Pipe Dream; Pamela Smart, associate professor of art history/anthropology; and Ewelina Zajac-Holdrege, founder and creative director, Idea Kraft.

See a slideshow featuring all of this year’s entries online at https://youtu.be/vQIx8bTDkiI.