Lab on a Chip and the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) were pleased to present the Art in Science award titled “Under the Looking Glass: Art from the World of Small Science” at the µTAS 2015 Conference.
The award highlights the aesthetic value in scientific illustrations while still conveying scientific merit. Many fantastic submissions were received this year with the winner selected by a panel of senior scientists who attended the conference.
And the winner is…
“Through Warhol’s eyepiece” photographed by Matteo Cornaglia, Laboratory of Microsystems, EPFL, Switzerland.
The winning artwork, “Through Warhol’s eyepiece” photographed by Matteo Cornaglia from the Laboratory of Microsystems, EPFL in Switzerland, was created by on-chip multi-dimensional imaging of C.elegans embryogenesis as observed through an Andy Warhol microscope, equipped with a 63x oil immersion objective and a pop art optical filter. For the first time, automated longitudinal studies of C.elegans embryos are made possible by microfluidics. For this artwork, 20 embryos are isolated from an on-chip worm culture upon egg laying and transferred into dedicated micro-incubators for long-term time-lapse imaging of the whole population at single-organism resolution. Each colour corresponds to a different instant of the same population development.
And the runners up are…
“Reflections of micro-ocean escaping” photographed by Maoxiang Guo, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
A tiny drop of liquid is encapsulated in a polymer microwell, covered with thin gold film. As the device is heated, the liquid is expanding, creating a bulge in the gold film, stress and ripples in the rest of the gold sheet.
“Microparticle Microgalaxy” photographed by Ghulam Destgeer, Department of Mechanical Engineering (KAIST), South Korea.
Microparticles are manipulated inside a sessile droplet of water placed on top of a vibrating acoustofluidic platform. Surface acoustic waves leaking into the water drive the concentration of the larger diameter (yellow) particles while smaller (blue) particles remain scattered in the background. The particles resembles stars spread in a celestial galaxy.
A big thank you to all the contributors this year.
