Images Spotlight Research at Imperial College

Top spot in ICL’s Art of Research scientific images competition, which aims to celebrate the diversity of scientific research across the London-based college went to Dr Arkhat Abzhanov, Reader in Evolution and Development Genetics in the Department of Life Sciences, for his image of an alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) embryo dissected from an egg.

Runner up was Dr Dafni Hadjieconomou from the Institute of Clinical Sciences, whose image shows the brain-gut signalling system in a fruitfly.

The competition also included a People’s Choice category, chosen through votes placed online and in person at the exhibition in the College Main Entrance. The People’s Choice Award was presented to Catherine Teo for her image “Heart of Life”, which shows the production of proteins in different parts of a cell.

The competition was coordinated by Imperial Innovations - responsible for commercialising research from Imperial – and was open to staff and students.

Judging  was by an independent panel drawn from the science and art worlds. Sabrina Taner is responsible for sourcing new biomedical imagery for the Wellcome Trust’s image library, while Jen Wong is Head of Programming at Science Gallery London and Co-founder and Director of Guerilla Science. Susan Aldworth is currently Artist in Residence at the University of York’s Sleep Lab.

Sabrina Taner said, "There was a strong selection of images which was particularly impressive as the competition is only in its first year. We would be very interested in acquiring some of these images into our collections at Wellcome Images"