The Scope of Our Research: Winners of the 2024 Envisioning Research Contest

From volcanic eruptions to microscopic polymers, the 2024 Envisioning Research contest captures the spectacular landscape of research being conducted at NC State.

The contest is a collaborative effort involving NC State’s Office of Research and Innovation, The Graduate School, the NC State University Libraries, the Office of Undergraduate Research, and University Communications and Marketing. The Envisioning Research contest was open to faculty, staff, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and undergraduates.

A complete list of winners, runners-up and honorable mentions is below. You can see high-res versions of each winning entry, as well as captions about each image, by clicking on the entry’s name. You can find a gallery of this year’s winners here. And beginning August 30, images from the Envisioning Research contest will be exhibited on the Art Wall in the Hunt Library on Centennial Campus.

Photography

First place, undergraduate students: Nicolás Galvez for “Cockroach preparing to jump.”

Second place, undergraduate students: Emily Boldor for “Seismic design structure.”

First place, graduate students and postdocs: Anukram Adhikary for “Frontiers of feminine fortitude.”

Second place, graduate students and postdocs: Hector Fajardo for “Sampling and mountain reflections.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Micki Recchuiti for “Eruption in Iceland: new land by the hour.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Ana Sapp for “Measuring a turtle.”

First place, faculty and staff: Erin McKenney for “Undergraduate ecologists in the field.”

Second place, faculty and staff: Nasir Shalizi for “Needle and cone collection from a witch’s broom 60′ above on a loblolly pine tree.”

Microscopy

First place, undergraduate students: Zachary Benfield for “Mature Streblospio benedicti headgear.”

Second place, undergraduate students: Lia Hunt for “Medusa mutation in M. guttatus seed pod.”

Honorable mention, undergraduate students: Christian Shaw for “Takamatsuella circinata chasmothecium dyed with lactophenol blue and imaged using a compound light microscope.”

First place, graduate students and postdocs: Abhirup Basu for “Corrosion’s supernova: unveiling destructive power in coatings.”

Second place, graduate students and postdocs: Victoria Himelstein for “In my own world: dendrite nucleation visible on the outside of a Mo-Si-B powder particle.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Mohammad Javad Zarei for “Achaemenid columns.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Akanksha Pragya for “SEM image of stretchable foam containing thermoplastic microspheres embedded in electrically conductive polymer.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Sai Karthik Gade for “Cross section of a Fraser fir needle showing an abundance of polyphenolic cells (blue) induced by phytohormone methyl jasmonate.”

First place, faculty and staff: Scott LaGreca for “Erysiphe sp. nov. chasmothecium.”

Second place, faculty and staff: Nathan Asquith for “Megasplosion.”

Graphics and Data Visualization

First place, graduate students and postdocs: Sergei Rigin for “Molecular forest.”

Second place, graduate students and postdocs: Skylar Penney for “Spline image of NC State’s campus.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Daoru Wang for “Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Ariana Farquharson for “Black churches as community anchors: Raleigh’s Black churches, 1830-present.”

Video

First place, graduate students and postdocs: Sergei Rigin for “Phase shift.”

Second place, graduate students and postdocs: Lily Kile for “Cover crop incorporation for nitrogen management for sweet potatoes.”

Honorable mention, graduate students and postdocs: Nidhi Diwakar for “Convective corona.”