You captured art under a microscope, perfected your imaging techniques, and submitted your best images to our first Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award—now the results are in!
Our jury of global representatives from both science and the arts evaluated images from over 400 entries on artistic and visual aspects, scientific impact, and microscope proficiency.
See the winning photos below!
The Global Prize Goes to Ainara Pintor
The global prize went to Ainara Pintor from Spain for her vibrant image of an immunostained mouse brain slice with two fluorophores. She refers to her winning image as “Neurogarden” because it reflects the brain’s complexity.
Global winner Ainara Pintor from Spain captured the immunostaining of a mouse brain slice with two fluorophores.
“There are over 70 million neurons in a mouse brain,” Ainara explained. “This is an example of what we can observe in the hippocampus of a single brain slice, in this case, taken from Thy1 transgenic mice.”
Juror and photographer Ron Caplain was particularly impressed by the artistic aspects of her image. “I see a narrative of repeating patterns and repeating colors, which makes the composition so wonderful,” he said.
Juror Stefan Terjung, the operational manager of an advanced light microscopy facility at EMBL Heidelberg, commented, “The winner masterfully captured the beauty of natural architecture in the brain.”
Ainara is thrilled to win Olympus’ first Global Image of the Year Award. “It’s a fantastic feeling that this image will cross borders and be seen all over the world!” said Ainara.
Regional Prizes Awarded to Howard Vindin, Tagide deCarvalho, and Alan Prescott
In addition to the global award, three regional prizes were awarded to Howard Vindin (Australia) for Asia, Tagide deCarvalho (United States) for the Americas, and Alan Prescott (UK) for EMEA. See their winning images below.
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2019 IOTY Award winners: (Top, left) Asia-Pacific regional winner Howard Vindin captured an autofluorescence image of a mouse embryo. (Top, right) Americas regional winner Tagide deCarvalho captured a tardigrade. (Bottom) EMEA regional winner Alan Prescott captured the frozen section of a mouse’s head.
Here are a few things the jury observed in these images:
“This beautiful work intertwines interesting scientific insights into mitophagy in developing tissue with a very artistic image composition,” said juror Stefan Terjung about Alan’s image.
Juror Geoff Williams, a bioimaging facility manager at Brown University, commented the composition and colors in Howard’s image.
“The colors work beautifully together,” he said. “There is enough of a realistic image, yet as a casual viewer you will not see the embryo—the forms are outstanding.”
He also remarked on the artistic qualities that shine in Tagide’s image: “The image is floating in space, the colors work well together, and the forms within the whole are interesting and varied.”
Honorable Mentions
This year’s honorable mentions include Ming-Der Lin, Nat Prunet, Justin Zoll, Tong Zhang, Daniela Malide, Hamed Rajabi, Rudolf Buechi, Martin Hailstone, and Nathan Renfro.
Congratulations to All—and Thanks for Making Our First Global IOTY Award a Success
We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who participated and made our first Global IOTY Award a success.
Satoshi Nakamura, Vice President, Scientific Solutions Global Marketing, Olympus Corporation, was impressed by the quality and diversity of images submitted.
“I’m so impressed by the amazing response to our first Global Image of the Year Award,” said Satoshi. “The creative image submissions embody our contest’s mission of celebrating art in science. We hope this competition continues to inspire people to find beauty in an unexpected place—right under their microscope.”
Stay tuned to hear details about the 2020 competition (and be first to know about the prizes!) We look forward to seeing your best new work.
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