By Leo Barolo
Genetics assistant scientist Ana Caroline Paiva Gandara is among the ten winners of the UW-Madison 14th annual Cool Science Image Contest.
Gandara, from the Drummond-Barbosa lab, used a confocal microscope to assemble a collage of sperm storage organs from female fruit flies into an image, which she calls the “Off-Spring bouquet.” The name is a play between “Spring bouquet,” as the image resembles a flower bouquet, and “offspring,” due to the nature of the organs captured.
She explains that she first had the idea to turn her science into art after watching a talk by Genetics Professor Ahna Skop. From then, she used a picture she had taken for a paper she published last year in Scientific Reports.
“I admit I had high expectations regarding the contest since I truly love how the bouquet looks — I was even thinking of making something else with the image, maybe a mug?” she remembers. “But I was genuinely surprised (I won) since I had previously submitted this image to other image contests and lost.”
Gandara says it took her about one hour to edit the images she prepared for her paper in Photoshop, including adding the colors. The green and red colors correspond to the sperm storage organs, pink and blue colors mark the spermatheca, and green and yellow circles are moving sperm cells. The visualization helps researchers characterize the effect of warm temperatures (typically negative) on the flies’ ability to produce sperm.
The ten winning images were chosen by a panel of experienced artists, scientists, and science communicators, including Professor Skop. Winners were selected based on the aesthetic, creative, and scientific qualities that distinguished them from this year’s field of submissions.
The winning entries showcase the research, innovation, scholarship, and curiosity of the UW–Madison community through traditional fine art techniques used to study the physics of interacting liquids, the surprising and beautiful results of chemical and geological processes, and new ways to manipulate and reveal biological processes.
The winning images go on display next week in an exhibit at the McPherson Eye Research Institute’s Mandelbaum and Albert Family Vision Gallery on the ninth floor of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, 1111 Highland Ave. The exhibit, which runs through the end of 2024, opens with a reception — open to the public — at the gallery on Thursday, Oct. 3, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Click here for a complete list of all the winners and their images.