CCRF Photo Contest Winners

Oct 18, 2019

Autumn 2019 CCRF Photo Contest

After a difficult decision process, the winners of the CCRF Photo Contest are:

  • 1st place: Hannah Kupferschmid

Photo taken on July 15, 2019 of a social worker and two nurses from a community clinic interviewing two residents of the Maple region about their health and cooking habits. Hannah took this photo during her time as a Summer Research Fellow with the UChicago Center for Global Health. She spent 10 weeks this past summer conducting public health research in Karnataka, India and worked alongside members of the Community Medicine Department at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, India studying the effects of household air pollution on olfaction. She took this and other photos during her days spent in the field conducting interviews.

  • 2nd place: Amy Tian

Photo of a Galapagos sea lion basking in the glow of the setting sun. Amy took this photo during her summer as a research assistant and participant in the Galapagos Urbanization and Sustainable Development research program with the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation. Her project was on quantifying the solar potential of two major towns and electrification of transportation to support the island's goals and policies of future sustainable growth. 

  • 3rd place: Alex Cohen

Photo that shows a diverse array of blue phase droplets with a variety of colors. Alex took this photo and others last fall in Professor Juan de Pablo's lab at the PME under an Olympus BX51-P microcsope with cross-polarizers. The droplets in the images are droplets of a type of material called blue phase liquid crystals. Blue phase liquid crystals form from elongated molecules which flow like a liquid while maintaining orientational order with cubic symmetry. This symmetry leads to striking optical patterns which can be delicately tuned by changing the temperature or confining the material microscopically. Alex's research involved investigating the impacts of temperature and microscale confinement on the structure and optical texture of blue phase liquid crystals. Since blue phase liquid crystals are extremely sensitive to tiny changes in temperature, confinement, and other stresses, they have tremendous potential to be used in sensing applications -- a temperature change of less than one degree celsius can completely change the color and optical pattern of the blue phase material. All of the droplets in the photos have diameters between 10-30 microns.
 

Thank you to all of the students who submitted their research and fellowships photos for the contest! Winning and runner-up photos may be displayed on various CCRF promotional materials.