IMDEA Materials recently celebrated our 14th annual Scientific Imaging Contest, featuring images related to materials characterisation, processing, simulation, as well as daily life at the Institute.
This year’s contest also featured an Art in Science category, as well as the opportunity to submit AI-generated images for the first time.
You can see a selection of the submitted images on the Institute’s Flickr account.
The most competitive category was Materials Characterisation, which this year was won by researcher Jayachandran Subbian, for his image Gold curls like pencil shavings, an SEM image of nano scratch profile of gold thin film sputter deposited on silicon substrate.
This year’s contest marked the introduction of the Art in Science category, designed to recognise images which capture the beauty of materials science research. Voting resulted in a tie between two images, Microlandscape by predoctoral researcher Teresa Nieto, and Inside the Red Glow, also from Jayachandran Subbian.
Microlandscape features a polarised picture of metallic satellites, with a non-pollarised round cut of another sample and a dendrite-looking tree overlay. Inside the Red Glow showcases the sputtering process of TiAlBN coating on the silicon substrate. The image shows the heating of the substrate before the deposition process.
The Simulation, Computational Modelling and AI-generated category was won by Mónica Echeverry Rendón, with her image Biology Unplugged, of a U87 cell line as a model to study TTF against glioblastoma, real image (Inverted Optical Microscope vs. AI-Generated Image).
The winner of the Open Subject category was Javier García Molleja, with his composite image and Antonio Vivaldi tribue of the IMDEA Materials Institute building throughout the year, titled IMDEA Materials´ Four Seasons.
Finally, the Public Choice award went to Javier García Pérez, for his AI-generated image Abstract Science at IMDEA Materials, an image that abstractly and colourfully represents what we do at IMDEA. It was generated using an artificial intelligence model, prompted with a description of the centre and its activities.
IMDEA Materials thanks all those researchers who took part in this year’s edition of the Imaging Contest!
