Art of Science

Updated Jan 7, 2024

Each year, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences invites SMHS medical students, graduate students, and postdocs to submit their artistic research images to the Art of Science contest. These images showcase our work and passion for science while highlighting the beauty and breadth of research in the SMHS.

2025 Winners

	Grand Prize: Sarah Kleb, PhD Student Advisor: Brett Shook, PhD IBS Program, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine 3T3-L1 fibroblasts that have been differentiated into adipocytes over a 14-day period with serum starvation and a cocktail of insulin, dexamethasone, and IBMX. The newly formed adipocytes have been stained with Oil Red O for analysis of lipid droplet formation within the adipocyte, and rate of differentiation.
	Sally Feng, PhD Student Advisor: Maho Shibata, PhD IBS Program, Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology 3-D confocal image of the tip of a prostate lobe from a 5-week-old mouse. Macrophages (Cx3cr1-YFP, green) were found surrounding the prostate in close proximity to nerve fibers (TUBB3, white).
	Vania Ballesteros Prieto, MS Student Advisor: Anelia Horvath, PhD Masters Program (Bioinformatics), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine “Sea Creatures.” Dimensionality-reduced visualizations of six single-cell long-read RNA-seq cancer samples generated using scSNViz.
	Marta Sanz, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Carles Moreno Soriano, Lab Technician Advisor: Sanjay Maggirwar, PhD Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Tropical Medicine A 20X immunohistochemistry of murine small intestine embedded in paraffin, which highlights cell nuclei stained with DAPI (cyan), the silhouette of enterocytes, goblet cells, and other cells of epithelial origin stained with E-Cadherin (magenta) and the cytoskeletal protein villin which reveals the intestinal brush border (white). The staining is meant to optimize a murine pseudotyped HIV model to study and target mechanisms of viral reservoir establishment.

2024 Winners

Image of retina after years of multiple laser scars. Emphasized in green.

Issa Ali, Medical Student

A fundus photo displaying the retina after years of multiple laser scars showing patches or spots that are lighter or darker than the surrounding retinal tissue. These scars are the result of laser photocoagulation therapy, a treatment used to manage retinal conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, retinal breaks, or other retinopathies.

Sally Feng, PhD Student

Distal tips of the anterior prostate lobe of a mouse at postnatal day 14 expressing transgenic Csf1r-EGFP (macrophages) in green. Tissue was immunolabeled wholemount for TUBB3 (neurons) in red and stained for DAPI (nuclei) in blue. A maximum intensity projection is shown of the 3D airyscan image.

Sarah Tiufekchiev, PhD Student

A 2-micron thick section of a D2-mdx dystrophic mouse heart. This slice is one of over 600 sequential images used for our creation of 3D renderings, but represents the midsection, in which you can clearly see areas of fibrosis and large-scale structures of the heart.

2023 Winners

	1st Prize: Bennett Levy, Medical Student This is an angiographic parametric image showing a cerebral a arteriovenous malformation with a large intranidal aneurysm (arrow) and a tortuous draining vein (arrow heads). This novel technology is used to understand flow dynamics in real time to help decide on the best treatment strategy.
	Khatereh Khorsandi, PhD, Postdoc A tiled 20x immunofluorescence image of murine skin, similar to an underwater ocean view. Stained for DAPI (nuclei) in blue, K14 (Keratinocytes) in red, and GFP in green (a mix of both shows a yellow color for keratinocytes), and decorated with the light of the sky plus some lines to display hair follicles that look like jellyfishes.
	Claire Charpentier, PhD Candidate A mouse cranial neural tube at embryonic day 9.5 imaged using a confocal microscope. All the cells are stained blue (DAPI). The cells from mesodermal origins are green and the neural crest-derived cells are red (transgenic fluorescence).
	Tyson Dawson, PhD Candidate A radial distribution across chromosomes of key transcripts in Alzheimer's Disease is shown. The overall figure highlights the complex network of expression and regulation of genomic elements that are associated with the progression of Alzheimer's Disease. In the central ring, links are drawn between genomic loci of endogenous retroviruses that have correlated expression and the length and expression levels of these elements are shown in the second and third rings, respectively.

2021 Winners

	1st Prize: Hovhannes Arestakesyan, Postdoc 3D reconstruction of astrocyte morphology insubfornical organ of a mouse brain that underwent optical tissue clearing.
	Paula Cooper, Postdoc A tiled 10x immunofluorescence image of murine skin, resembling a landscape. Stained for DAPI (nuclei) in blue, Perilipin1 (adipocytes) in red, and GFP in green, and embellished with a night sky.
	Lana Jagannathan, PhD Student Membrane and nucleus stain of two-year-old wild-type mouse quadricep.

2020 Winners

	1st Prize: Han Rae Kim, Postdoctoral scientist 3D reconstruction of microglia filaments in the brain subfornical organ.
	Tyson Scott Dawson, PhD Student A phylogeny depicting the evolutionary relationships of 2000 SARS-CoV-2.
	Tomas Kanholm, PhD Student Fallopian tube cells that have been genetically modified to create a model of ovarian cancer development.

2019 Winners

	1st Prize: Naemeh Pourshafie, PhD student Human iPSC-derived motor neurons. Motor neurons are stained with TUJ1(red), HB9(green) and DAPI(blue).
	Tyson Scott Dawson, PhD Student Circos plot depicting differentially expressed genes in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and their location in the human genome.
	Cullen Fleming, MD student Images from a negative-space 3D printed model of the ventricular and cisternal system segmented from a brain MRI and labeled with voice-activated LED lights.
	Zhe Yu, PhD, Postdoctoral scientist Angiotensin II type 1 receptor-eGFP-BAC mouse was bred with glutamic acid decarboxylase-mCherry mouse and their brain was further stained with anti-parvalbumin antibody.

2018 Winners
	1st Prize: Brett Eaton, PhD student Marburg virus (turquoise) budding from gray infected dendritic cells (red nuclei)
	Rachel Burga, PhD student Natural killer cell with iron oxide nanoparticles conjugated to the surface
	Samantha Dow, PhD student Neurons (red and yellow) derived from apical (blue) and basal (green) progenitor stem cells in the cortex
	Naemeh Pourshafie, PhD student Motor neuron with dendrites and axons (yellow) and mutant protein aggregates (red) among undifferentiated stem cells.
	Jessica Schenck, PhD student Astrocytes (green) and nuclei (blue) in the central nervous system

2017 Winners

	1st Place: Aslam Akhtar, Medical student 2017 First Place Winner Olfactory bulb interneurons (green) and astrocytes (magenta) in the brain
	Shabnum Patel, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow 2017 Winner T cells producing different cytokines (in different colors) in an immune response to a microbial antigen
	Naemeh Pourshafie, PhD student 2017 Winner Spinal motor neurons derived from stem cells with dendrites and axons (red), motor neuron marker (green), and nuclei (blue)
	Jessica Schenck, PhD student 2017 Winner Cerebellum with myelin (red), astrocytes (green), and nuclei (blue)