Images of Research Competition
Competition Rules
The Office of the Dean is pleased to announce 2nd COP’s “Images of Research” competition. The purpose of the competition is to assemble a portfolio of the most innovative and creative images to convey the range and profoundness of research taking place in COP. These images will be used to promote, advance and represent our College both in printed and digital media.
This competition offers COP trainees the opportunity to submit compelling digital images created in the course of their research and is open to any student or postdoc currently working in the College. Between April 20 and May 31, 2012, students and postdocs are invited to submit one image in each of the 2 categories:
- Images of Research. Technical images generated in the course of the research or to illustrate a research topic.
- Images of Scientists at Work. Creative images demonstrating how the research is done.
After May 31, everyone in the College will be able to review the submissions and vote for the best image. Prizes will be awarded to the top three entries, regardless of a category.
- 1st Prize: $400
- 2nd Prize: $300
- 3rd Prize: $200
An exhibit of the winning images will be on display on the COP web site. All entries will become property of the College and remain in a College of Pharmacy database. They will be used to promote the College and research going on in the College in both printed and digital media.
Competition Guidelines:
- Only one entry per person in each of the two categories. Please note that you will need to complete submission of an image #1, and then login back to submit image #2. To be entered into competition, you do not need to submit 2 images; one is sufficient.
- Submission must be an image that was generated as part of the trainee’s research in COP.
- Entrant(s) must be principal creator(s) of image. Collaborative submissions are allowed.
- Upload your image in either of the following formats: .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png. Maximum size is 1 MB. Dimensions should not exceed 7” on the longer side.
- Entrants are responsible for ensuring that any relevant permissions have been sought, that no copyright has been infringed, and that any necessary release forms have been signed.
- Upload your images by 11:59 pm on May 31, 2012.
Please follow this link to upload your images.
For any questions about the competition, contact Martina Vaskova. For technical issues with uploading your images, contact Keiland Pullen.
2011 Image Competition Winners
Last year, 133 people voted for the best image in our inaugural COP Image Competition. The winners are shown below, with number of votes received in parenthesis. One more time, big thanks go to all our undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral trainees who participated and made this first round a success.
First Place
Dirim Arslan, Biopharmaceutical Sciences (21 votes)
Title: Infection Day
It was the day for another experiment that was planned weeks ahead which also happened to be the same day of the 2011 Chicago Blizzard. Normally a 10 minute walk to the COP took over 45 minutes under severe weather conditions. This picture was captured right before arriving at the COP behind the frozen doors of CSN Building. And the experiment; it was a success!
Second Place
My Nguyen and Misuk Bae, Biopharmaceutical Sciences (14 votes)
Title: A Crack of Dawn
The sun rising-like image on the photograph is isolated E.coli colonies grown on an agar plate after being transformed with red fluorescence protein (RFP) plasmid. The research is focused on designing hydrogel microparticles as polynucleic acid delivery system. We choose RFP plasmid as a model polynucleic acid to evaluate the transfection efficiency of hydrogel microparticles. The picture was taken under LED light bulbs in a UIC College of Pharmacy research laboratory. This creation was equally contributed by My Nguyen (undergraduate research assistant, Biology) and Misuk Bae (graduate student, Biopharmaceutical Sciences). RFP plasmid is a generous gift from Professor William Beck.
Third Place
Hiten Gutka, Pharmacognosy (Biotech) (10 votes)
Title: Crystals--unraveling the secrets of Life
The focus of my research is to study the enzymes that are important in the metabolic pathways of pathogenic bacteria. Insight into the structure and function of such important proteins forms the basis for developing new drugs. Hence the title "Crystals - unraveling the secrets of Life" was chosen. Structural characterization of proteins is performed by X-ray crystallography, wherein the most difficult step is to obtain adequate quality crystals. Crystals of a phosphatase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis are captured here. These crystals were grown following standard crystallization technique (hanging drop vapor diffusion) and images captured on a microscope.
Honorable Mentions
There were three images tied for the 4th place, each receiving 9 votes.
Ja Hye Myung Andrew Newsome Suzanne Quartuccio Nano-rock hits nanowires Natural Blue Martini Damage