ChBE students and faculty named winners and finalists in 2021 SCS Science Image Challenge

2021 Science Image Challenge Results

Winner Main Category

Azzaya Khasbaatar and Prapti Kafle
Diao Lab, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Seizing the Darkness
Presented is a cross-polarized microscopy image of a crystallized anticancer drug material, Amonafide, prepared by solution printing. By tuning the solution printing speed, the crystalline behavior of Amonafide is controlled, and at a very high speed, it forms the as shown crystallite within the dark amorphous region.

Finalist

Yu-Heng Deng
Kong Lab, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Crash-Landing on Biofilms
Biofilms are clusters composed of bacteria and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) which protect bacteria from attack in surroundings. This image demonstrates a self-locomotive, antimicrobial microtorpedo (SLAM) that utilizes antimicrobial solution as fuel to penetrate EPS and kill bacteria.

Finalist

Daniel Davies
Diao Lab, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Music of Molecules 
Shown is an artistic rendering of an organic transistor device and the various polymorphic structures of 2DQTT-o-B. Much like pressing different notes on a piano, the many diverse crystal structures exhibited by 2DQTT-o-B allow for tuning the device electronic properties by 5 orders of magnitude. 

Finalist

Moeen Meigooni
Tajkhorshid Lab, Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology, Department of Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, Beckman Institute

The Great Wavy Membrane
The curvature induced by cardiolipin (red) in a cell-scale model of the mitochondrial membrane bilayer highlighting undulations. The image was rendered using VMD and post-processed with neural style transfer in the style of Katsushika Hosukai’s famous woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

Finalist

Defne Gorgun and Anda Trifan

Tajkhorshid Lab, Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology, Department of Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, Beckman Institute

Interaction Gem-ergies
A close-up view of the replication transcription complex of the SARS-CoV-2 with the Fluctuating Finite Element Analysis (FFEA) method composed of 3 layers:  nodes, mesh, and faces. The colors represent the van der Waals interaction energies between the complex subunits.

Winner Cover Art Category

Antonia Statt, Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Wesley Reinhart, Pennsylvania State University

Macromolecules self-assemble to form different types of disordered aggregates depending on their monomer sequence and chemistry. New machine learning approaches offer insight into and control over these processes to design new functional nanomaterials for energy, medicine, and beyond.