2019 Finalists

1st Place 2019: Quiet - Lorenzo Bertizzolo

This is a close capture of the inner walls of an indoor facility we use for our experiments. Its walls are covered in foam cones to absorb radio transmissions and reduce the multi-path effect.

2nd Place 2019: Charged Liquid Breakup - Elahe Javadi

Electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHDA) is based on electric stresses focusing a liquid exiting from an injector into a very tiny jet. This jet disintegrates into droplets about two orders of magnitude smaller than the orifice diameter due to growing disturbances. This method of atomization has particular applications because it controllably produces monodispersed fine charged droplets without requiring very small orifices, which are prone to clogging.

3rd Place 2019: Looking inside a constricting airway - Suzanne Stasiak

Second harmonic generation microscopy and fluorescent microscopy are combined to visualize changes in the fibrous extracellular matrix (collagen: green) and smooth muscle (actin: red) in a living airway as it constricts. These images help us understand the role of extracellular components of the airway wall in diseases like asthma.

People's Choice 2019: Queen Angelfish - Jaxon Derow

While exploring new ways to collect and catalogue DNA for Ocean Genome Legacy, I came across this Queen Angelfish taking shelter under a coral head in Cozumel, Mexico. Clearly showing off for the camera, she presented us all with a stark reminder of the immeasurable beauty our work aims to protect.

Two-Face - Timothy Duerr

This axolotl is half-green because as a single cell green embryo, it was injected with CRISPR-Cas9 to disrupt the gene coding for green fluorescent protein (GFP). Sometimes, this GFP disruption occurs after the first cell division in just one cell, meaning only half of the adult axolotl will lose the green fluorescence. Interestingly, some cells in its jaw are green, likely because jaw progenitor cells migrate between the white and green halves during development.

Sesarma Reticulatum - Kayla Sklar

One day in Cape Cod in a salt marsh, I needed to collect 90 Sesarma reticulatum or Purple marsh crabs. I caught this beautiful, bright purple crab that measured around 28 mm, which is very large. These crabs were put into cages in the field to test how size of crab affected the growth and abundance of Spartina alternaflora or cord grass.

Warning Signal - Hana Isihara

This poison dart frog (Oophaga pumilio) from Isla Colon, Bocas del Toro, Panama is aposematic. That means he has bright colors to stand out and warn his predators that he is poisonous. Across the Bocas del Toro archipelago, the colors of the frogs vary by island. On Isla Colon they are green with black spots. However, on other islands, they can be blue or red. As MS Marine Biology students, we spent a week learning about tropical terrestrial ecology. While we are in a marine biology program, it is crucial to understand the terrestrial ecosystems because all of the tropical ecosystems - rain forest to mangroves to sea grasses to coral reefs - are connected.

To the Bone - Judith Piet

Cross-section of a mouse tibia. Regions that are glowing indicate active bone formation in the marrow compartment. My research focuses on how to promote formation in old osteoporotic bone.

Seeing the Light: Nerve Fibers in the Retina - Anastasia Yandulskaya

Vision is enabled by the retina - a thin neural structure in the back of the eye. Its nerve cells capture light, convert it to electric impulses, and send them to the brain. I study how injured retina can regenerate in salamanders. In this cross section of the salamander retina, cell nuclei are shown in blue, and in red is the intricate network of retinal nerve fibers that carry visual information about the outside world.

Searching for Bugs - Kestral Johnston

This photo looks at our efforts to find the best concentration to use for determining the types of microorganisms present in biofilm in a wetland system used to treat wastewater for water reuse. The sample is dyed with a stain that uses bright blue to indicate DNA and highlights microorganisms present in the sample.

Purple and Yellow Dye Under Light - Annie Ikemoto

This is an image of violet and yellow dyes swirling in water under a high-intensity lamp. While my research studies nanoparticles and not dyes, this lamp represents what I am currently using in the lab. Instead of dyes, we are observing changes in nanoplastic particles when exposed to light. After letting a solution with nanoplastic particles sit under the light, a sample is placed in an instrument that measures particle sizes.

Platelet Plateaus - Evan Toth

A platelet of aluminum oxide (alumina). The picture spans 2 micrometers – around 2% the width of an average human hair. It's easy to see the geometric plane-by-plane stacking in this image since, for some reason, the layers of this platelet started flaking off during the process that dispersed it in water. Alumina is used in my research regarding composite reinforcement, incorporated into polymer matrices with cellulose nanocrystals.

Microscopic Teddy Bear - Jessica Faust

This cuddly micro-bear is made from polymer crystals grown on the surface of a sapphire and imaged with scanning electron microscopy. The polymer crystals are nucleated from carbon nanotubes decorating the surface, and grow into spherical shapes. Each spherical polymer crystal is approximately 1 micron, or 1/1000 of a millimeter. This technique is used to improve the interface in polymer-ceramic composites.

Micro-Spherical WGM Shells - Vedant Sumaria

Arrays of on-chip spherical glass shells of hundreds of micrometers in diameter with ultra-smooth surfaces and sub-micrometer wall thicknesses have been fabricated and have been shown to sustain optical resonance modes with high Q-factors of greater than 50 million. The resonators exhibit temperature sensitivity of −1.8 GHz K−1 and can be configured as ultra-high sensitivity thermal sensors for a broad range of applications.

LQT1 Cable - Mingwang Zhong

1-D cable showing cardiac action potential for long QT syndrome type 1. With left ventricle (green) action potential phenotype different from the right ventricle (blue), premature ventricular complex (red) occurs and propagates along the cable — the premature ventricular complex results in malignant cardiac arrhythmia.

Love Is In The Air - Sophie McLaughlin

Love is in the air. This image depicts Borrelia burgdorferi clumped together in a heart. These spirochete bacteria cause Lyme disease. Image acquired by dark field microscopy.

King Sized - Jeriyla Kamau-Weng

"When you look at this image, what do you think of? brains? A piece of glass? Maybe a delicate crystal? Actually, it's the dissected testicle of a termite! My lab's current project focuses on the impacts of disease on the reproductive capacity of termite kings in order to understand the ""decisions"" organisms make when it comes to investing in immunity or reproduction. "

Lime caviar - Hannah Meiseles

Human cells, much like human beings, don't quite enjoy existing alone. To form tissues, our cells require attachment, whether it be to other surfaces or other cells. My lab grows our experimental cells in liquid, and we do so by attaching them to tiny sticky orbs, called microcarriers. In this picture, the microcarriers are the large circles, while the tiny dots floating around are the human cells. Soon they will attach, ready for more growing!

Hydrogels - Alexandra Spak

In this research, I was investigating how changes in salinity impacted hydrogel bonding and properties, like size and elasticity. Hydrogels are composed of many polymers cross-linked together, and are considered a "smart material" because they can change their shape depending on their surroundings. In this photo, hydrogels soaked in high-salinity solutions were much smaller than hydrogels soaked in pure water.

H&E Stained Skin - Austin Kim

This is a hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained skin section of a C57BL/6 mouse (common lab mouse). The hematoxylin dyes the cellular nuclei purple while the eosin dyes the non-nuclear cells such as collagen pink. H&E staining is used in our lab because it illustrates a basic picture of the different cells and structures in the skin. In this picture, you can clearly see the epidermal layer, dermal layer, subcutaneous layer, and even the muscle.

Hexagonal Mesh of Knotted Toroidal Monomers - Sebastian Hodge

This is an image of a woven mesh structure composed of toroidal monomers that is part of a project exploring the structural possibilities that are achievable using pipe cleaners as a building material. A fundamental unit of assembly, the pipe cleaner toroid, is achieved through coiling and closing a helix into a loop. Toroidal monomers can be knotted or frictionally coupled both laterally and vertically to assemble planar and polyhedral meshes and helical tubes.

HiPSC NPCs - Julia Ennis

Immunofluorescent staining of hiPSC (human induced pluripotent stem cell) NPCs (neuronal progenitor cells). DAPI, seen in blue, is used as a DNA stain, and helps to visualize the present nuclei. Other fluorescently labeled antibodies were used at the wavelengths of 488, 568, and 647nm and are seen as green, orange, and red.

For the Love of Chemistry - Kelly Bachovch

After figuring out conditions for a difficult selective iodination of a compound, purification resulted in fractions in a gradient from purple to bright pink right around the time of Valentine's Day. It was the first time in my research that one of my compounds wasn't brown or yellow, and it was a nice surprise. The color comes from the excess iodine used in the reaction.

Finding Beauty in Failure_Morgan Packer.

Filter Feeder - Tim Briggs

I'm working on telling the story of marine microplastic pollution. Filter feeders like this huge whale shark are one of many marine creatures that end up eating plastic accidentally. Smaller whale sharks than this one can filter 86,000 gallons of water in an hour, usually feeding for 7 to 8 hours per day. The plastic can affect their reproduction and growth by getting lodged in their guts, and through toxic accumulation.

Equiluminant Colors - Jingyi He

Pictures of the two moving stimuli used in our study are shown on the left, and their red, green, and blue components are shown as waves in time on the right. In color vision research, we create each stimulus following precise science, and elegantly, the resulting images fall into the field of art.

Essence of Mars - Stephanie Gao

A fluorescent image of Escherchia coli cells stained with propidium iodide, a DNA intercalator that identifies dead cells within a population. Treated with isopropanol, the sample pictured contains millions of lysed bacterial cells. This staining procedure is commonly used in determining cell viability.

Developing Axolotl Limb - Alexander Lovely

This image shows the localization of three types of messenger RNA in the developing axolotl salamander arm. The magenta color shows cells producing paired related homeobox 1, a gene which instructs cells to become an arm. The cyan color shows cells that are producing fibroblast growth protein 8, which tells a limb to grow outward. Cells in yellow show expression of the sonic hedgehog gene, which determines the location of the pinky of humans and salamanders.

Cryopreserved Superior Cervical Ganglia - Tess Torregrosa

Many cell types are able to be cryopreserved, but due to the sensitivity of neurons, not many neuronal cell types have been frozen for storage. We have found that superior cervical ganglia, neurons that release norepinephrine, are able to be frozen, thawed, and grown in the lab, and behave similarly to their fresh counterparts. Cryopreserving this cell type allows for easier experimentation to develop a model of the nervous system to the heart.

Color Tagged Drosophila Melanogaster Larvae - James Yu

Drosophila (fruit fly) larvae are slightly transparent, so feeding them colored food allows us to identify them easily. We are currently developing a robotic system to monitor and observe these larvae for long periods of time to study how individual behavioral phenotypes (i.e. personalities) form and how that affects their neurological physiology and vice versa. The color tagging ensures that we’re tracking the same individual over the entire experiment.

DAPI/Phalloidin Stained MRC5 Cell - Fausto Capelluto

For this image, I used Phalloidin to stain the actin cytoskeleton of the cell for some research regarding actin-dependent endocytosis. DAPI was utilized to visualize the nuclei.

Cercariae Shed from Freshwater Snails in Ghana - Raeann Dalton

I worked at the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine during my second co-op, where my team and I studied a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis that is transmitted via freshwater snails and is prevalent in Ghana. After collecting snails from nearby rivers, we brought them back to the lab to see if they carried parasites. The Fasciola species shown in this image were discovered from a snail collected in November during the dry season.

Architecture Cloud - Pengfei He

A data visualization of the abstract spatial organization of a famous building designed by Venturi in 1959.

Can Corals Fight Back Against Climate Change? - Louise Cameron

My research focuses on how organisms respond to ocean acidification. This process alters seawater chemistry, making it harder for animals and plants to calcify, or build hard structures. I study how marine organisms control calcification site chemistry, and whether they can maintain this under global change. Here, a pH-sensitive microelectrode is being inserted into a coral’s calcifying fluid. We found that some corals can combat ocean acidification by actively elevating the pH of this site.

Breaking Hearts - Jonathan Soucy

The brain regulates heart rate in response to the surrounding environment. To study this system, I develop organ-on-chip models using rodent cells. This image shows that cells from the heart grow, divide, and establish connections with each other. Shown in red are cardiac cell structural proteins, turquoise are cell nuclei, and purple are the connections between cells.

Brain Microvascular Networks - Max Winkelman

My lab hopes to create an accurate model of the human blood brain barrier. To work towards this goal, we have developed brain blood vessels inside a microfluidic device. Endothelial cells, shown in red, form capillary networks supported by pericytes, shown in violet, and astrocytes, shown in green. The nuclei of all cells are shown in blue.

Bloom forming Cyanobacteria of the Charles River - McNamara Rome

Aphanizomenon, Anabaena, and Microcystis are the three dominant bloom-forming cyanobacteria in the Charles River. Each organism forms colonies of rafted cells and are capable of rapid growth.

BLA neuron - Jordan Abettan

This is a rat brain BLA (amygdala) neuron that was intracellularly microinjected with a fluorescent dye called Lucifer Yellow, and then imaged.

Baja Mono Waterfall - Katrina Fedors

As a student in the Three Seas master's program, I've had the opportunity to conduct research in various ecosystems. This picture was taken during a hike at Baja Mono, Boquete, Panama for our Tropical Terrestrial Ecology course.

And What About Joy? - Rosemary Ajegwu

I created this digital collage which has various faces on red dots and connecting lines symbolizing the location optimization model we are using to find the most optimal locations within the United States to place sex trafficking shelters. There is also a search bar at the top representing the research I am currently doing on quantifying non-capitalist, humane measures such as joy, to integrate into the model.

And if you Gaze Long Enough into a Biofilm... - Evan Hunter

Typically, bacteria are perceived as single-celled. However, they in fact form multicellular communities called biofilms. Biofilms are essential for host-microbe symbioses and have important implications for health, industry, and agriculture. The Chai Lab studies Bacillus subtilis, which forms biofilms on the roots of plants and enhances host plant growth. However, biofilms can be cultivated in the lab on Petri dishes with specific induction medias. Normally, colony biofilms are relatively symmetrical, but this one looks like a monkey, which I thought was funny.

A Cluster of Dorsal Root Ganglia Sensory Neurons - Danielle Large

This is a cluster of immunostained dorsal root ganglia neurons imaged at 20X magnification. These neurons were used in studies examining the effect of chemotherapeutic paclitaxel on neuron growth, morphology, and metabolism.

A Flower Within - Ariela Esmurria

An unknown endophyte isolated from a young soybean plant. Isolation of native bacteria and fungi from plant tissue can help us understand how those microorganisms help plants to survive in their environments.

3D Encapsulated W-20 Stromal Cells in a Hydrogel - Ebrahim Mostafavi

Representative F-Actin/DAPI fluorescent image of W-20 stromal cells encapsulated in a hydrogel.

Origami-Inspired Robotics - Soroush Kamrava

Origami, art of paper folding, is the source of inspiration for many recently developed technologies. Here, we developed an origami-inspired biomimetic robotic hand which offers an effective control using a limited number of actuators.