Allowed artists: Students, staff, and faculty in the Pratt School of Engineering.
Submission deadline: 5:00 p.m. EST, Friday, January 13, 2023.
Prizes: $100 each for three judges’ choices and two audience choices.
Guidelines:
Judging criteria: Criteria include – but are not limited to – creativity, visual appeal, uniqueness, and description, and will be judged by an undisclosed panel of judges from the Pratt School of Engineering.
Submission location: A link to a Qualtrics submission form may be found here.
Description: Photo descriptions should tell a brief story about the origins or details of an image. Photographers, ask yourselves: what makes your photo unique? What makes it invisible? What is its setting – i.e., where, when, and how did you capture it? The maximum description length is 150 words – roughly the length of the first four paragraphs of this section – but brevity is encouraged.
Physical display: Winning submissions will be displayed on paper. We’ll do our best to preserve colors, but nonstandard color profiles (i.e., those not in sRGB/P3/CMYK, etc.) are strongly discouraged.
RAW images: RAW formats are not allowed. RAW post-processing varies between computers/programs much more than other image formats, and RAW image files are often unnecessarily large. Feel free to edit in RAW, but please convert submissions to one of the above formats before submission.
Submission deadline: The deadline for submission is strict and will not be moved. Please submit photos and corresponding descriptions well before the deadline.
Additional questions: Email egsc.pratt@duke.edu with an appropriate subject line. (Using the mailto: link above will auto-populate one.)
Past Winning Submissions:
Bacterial Easter Eggs. Submitted by Zach Holmes, Yuanchi Ha, and Andrea Weiss. 2022 Judges’ Choice. “No, these dazzling spheres are not easter eggs or hidden gems, they are bacterial communities! To visually display how distinct bacterial species can coexist, engineers in the You lab trapped bacteria in hydrogel capsules and cultured them overnight in growth media. These species express colored proteins, and we captured their glow using a fluorescence microscope. These capsules are one way to spatially control bacterial growth, and this technology could be used to support research involving bacterial communities like chemical production, biocomputing, and engineered living materials!”
The Watcher. Submitted by Nathan Rayens. 2022 Judges’ Choice. “Our cells are packed with a plethora of fantastically complex organelles, so it is perhaps unsurprising that intermediate filaments, which provide the cell with support and organization, do not often claim the spotlight. My research is partially focused on seeing how these irregular, meandering structures may influence intracellular transport, the directed movement of cargo throughout the cell. Generally, my favorite days in lab are those during which I get to peer into the unfathomably tiny. Recently though, when I looked through the microscope, I felt like I was being watched back.”
SEM Image of a “Solar Vine.” Submitted by Michael Valerino. 2022 Judges’ Choice. “On the harsh surface of a solar panel where temperatures regularly exceed 140 degrees F – life still thrives. This filamentous fungus grew and reproduced in less than 3 weeks in the hot India sun. This hearty organism has been shown to permanently damage the glass panel surface, leading to losses in efficiency. Regular brushing with water is the only way to prevent a thick film of growth. Coating the organic material in gold allowed for a crisp SEM image, the twisted shapes of which remind me of a vine strangling a tree.”
Losing Our Way and Finding the Light. Submitted by August Burns. 2022 Audience Choice. “Our North Carolina Outer Banks is well known as “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for its many shipwrecks. Due to the shifting waters and many storms, the channels change and are invisible to our human eye. Even the most experienced fishermen have lost their way in the channels. This fishing vessel, “Oceans Pursuit,” looks like an ancient ghostship, though it ran ashore in March 2020. As many lost their way in the pandemic, I turned to light painting photography. In this image, you will find a Golden Orb created within the ship. This single image was created by spinning a ball of light in a full circle for over a minute. With long exposures, we can move light in the dark to create beautiful art such as these orbs and we are completely invisible in the photo.”
DraBot. Submitted by Vardhman Kumar. 2022 Audience Choice. “The image shows a soft robotic dragonfly, DraBot, that is powered by fluid pressure via microchannels embedded within its body.”
Dust Flower. Submitted by Michael Valerino. 2020 winner. “Particulate matter deposition to solar panels, known as soiling, can reduce energy production by up to 40%. SEM images of deposited matter help us to better understand the sources impacting soiling. This piece of dust reminded our group of a flower, seemingly blooming out of an unearthly field. Even at this tiny scale, magnified to 2,500x, we can find familiarity.”
Husks. Submitted by Samantha Addis. 2020 3rd place. “A handful of soil holds hidden gems: the microscopic shells of Arcellacean amoebae. Cobbled together from the soil around them or secreted by the cells themselves, these tiny houses are not just excellent environmental indicators – they’re also remarkably photogenic.”
Vortex Attraction. Submitted by Hunter Bachman. 2020 3rd place. “People say that love can be a whirlwind of emotions. This fluorescent image of microfluidic vortices demonstrates how a wild interaction can yield something quite beautiful, much like the relationships we form with those around us.”
A Refractive World in Crystal. Submitted by Haibei (Vince) Zhu. 2020 audience choice. “A crystal ball can refract light to create a distinctive scene. Sometimes, our thinking also needs a crystal ball to generate different and innovative ideas.”
