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The award recognizes the best in light microscopy imaging worldwide

Olympus announced the winners of their first Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award, a competition that recognizes the best in life science imaging worldwide.

The global prize went to Ainara Pintor from Spain for her vibrant image of an immonostained mouse brain slice with two fluorophores. She refers to her winning image as “Neurogarden” because it reflects the brain’s complexity.

“There are over 70 million neurons in a mouse brain,” Pintor 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.”

Pintor 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 Pintor.

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. Honorable mentions include Ming-Der Lin, Nat Prunet, Justin Zoll, Tong Zhang, Daniela Malide, Hamed Rajabi, Rudolf Buechi, Martin Hailstone and Nathan Renfro. All entries were evaluated on artistic and visual aspects, scientific impact and microscope proficiency.

Satoshi Nakamura, Vice President, Marketing, Scientific Solutions Division, Olympus Corporation, was impressed by the quality and diversity of images submitted this year.

“I’m so impressed by the amazing response to our first Global Image of the Year Award,” said Wagstaff. “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.”

About the Image of the Year (IOTY) Award

Olympus’ IOTY Award began in 2017 as the Image of the Year European Life Science Light Microscopy Award with the aim to celebrate both the artistic and scientific value of microscopy images. Today, the competition stays true to this mission by encouraging people across the world to look at scientific images in a new way, appreciate their beauty, and share images with others.

To learn more about the award-winning images and the microscope techniques used to capture them, visit Olympus-LifeScience.com/IOTY.

For more information about Olympus Life Science, please visit Olympus-LifeScience.com.

Olympus 2019 IOTY Award winners: (Top, left) global winner Ainara Pintor from Spain captured the immunostaining of a mouse brain slice with two fluorophores. (Top, right) Asia-Pacific regional winner Howard Vindin captured an autofluorescence image of a mouse embryo. (Bottom, left) Americas regional winner Tagide deCarvalho captured a tardigrade. (Bottom, right) EMEA regional winner Alan Prescott captured the frozen section of a mouse’s head.

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