The 2022 Art of Science competition drew dozens of entries, highlighting the creativity of Binghamton University faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, postdocs and staff members.
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.”
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.
The 2022 judges were Kirsten Prior, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences; Marcus Newton, Photo Specialist/Digital Technician, Department of Art and Design; and Lorin Miller, Class of 2022.
You can see all of the 2022 entries in this video:
