Skip to main content
Research and Innovation

Gallery: The 2024 Envisioning Research Winners

A microscopic image of the sexual structure of a powdery mildew with a dark orange and brown center with a halo of light blue tendrils around it.
Microscopy: Honorable mention, Undergraduate Students: Christian Shaw for “Takamatsuella circinata chasmothecium dyed with lactophenol blue and imaged using a compound light microscope.”

From volcanic eruptions to microscopic polymers, NC State researchers highlighted their vital work in natural resources, biochemistry, engineering and more through art in the 2024 Envisioning Research Contest. Explore a selection of photos, graphics, data visualization and microscopic images from this year’s contest in the gallery below. A complete list of the winners is here.

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.

See all the winners, including videos and interactive graphics, on Flickr. Images from the Envisioning Research contest will be exhibited on the Art Wall in the Hunt Library on Centennial Campus.


Photography: First place, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Anukram Adhikary for “Frontiers of feminine fortitude.”
Against a black background, a microscopic image of a bright blue and green anterior portion of a mature Streblospio benedicti — a segmented worm that lives in marine ecosystems.
Microscopy: First place, Undergraduate Students: Zachary Benfield for “Mature Streblospio benedicti headgear.”
A close-up photograph of a reddish-brown cockroach on a white ledge against a purple background.
Photography: First place, Undergraduate Students: Nicolás Galvez for “Cockroach preparing to jump.”
An image of polymer structures that resemble a view of a forest of brown tree trunks, reflecting how the microworld resembles human-scale objects like a forest and nature's ability to replicate its artistic patterns across different scales.
Graphics and Data Visualization: First place, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Sergei Rigin for “Molecular forest.”
A seasoned tree climber with a harness and a red helmet scales a loblolly pine tree.
Photography: Second place, Faculty and Staff: Nasir Shalizi for “Needle and cone collection from a witch’s broom 60′ above on a loblolly pine tree.”
A digital model of the Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple, also known as the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda —China's oldest and tallest wooden pagoda.
Graphics and Data Visualization: Honorable mention, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Daoru Wang for “Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple.”
A photographic close-up of a model-sized tower constructed out of lightweight balsa wood, first created as a meticulous computer software model before construction began.
Photography: Second place, Undergraduate Students: Emily Boldor for “Seismic design structure.”
A data visualization of a LiDAR point cloud data converted into a colorized spline to determine areas of similar elevation moving from a density of red and orange to yellow, light green, teal and blue.
Graphics and Data Visualization: Second place, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Skylar Penney for “Spline image of NC State’s campus.”
A microscopy image of a polymer coating on an aluminum substrate. The image reveals a 'supernova' where the scribe center in bright made on a brown polymer-coated substrate and a green, hairy failure zone after an exposure to concentrated hydrochloric acid vapor for one hour.
Microscopy: First place, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Abhirup Basu for “Corrosion’s supernova: unveiling destructive power in coatings.”
A microscopic image of a seed pod mutation with a twisting, snake-like pattern in bright colors.
Microscopy: Second place, Undergraduate Students: Lia Hunt for “Medusa mutation in M. guttatus seed pod.”
A microscopy image of a network of light blue lines and circular regions of pink and green showing showing platelets as they are generated from cells called megakaryocytes that reside within the bone marrow.
Microscopy: Second place, Faculty and Staff: Nathan Asquith for “Megasplosion.”
A photograph of three students wearing waterproof clothing inspect samples in the woods.
Photography: First place, Faculty and Staff: Erin McKenney for “Undergraduate ecologists in the field.”
A photograph of a volcano erupts with a flow of bright orange lava in an area surrounded by blackened earth and mountains in Iceland.
Photography: Honorable mention, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Micki Recchuiti for “Eruption in Iceland: new land by the hour.”
A circular map that geo-spatially and temporally locates historic Black churches within past and present Black communities across Raleigh and contextualizes their development within a timeline of national and local events.
Graphics and Data Visualization: Honorable mention, Graduate Students and Postdocs: Ariana Farquharson for “Black churches as community anchors: Raleigh’s Black churches, 1830-present.”
A microscopy image of a cross-section of a Fraser fir needle appearing somewhat egg-shaped with blue and jade-colored polyphenolic cells along its edge and center.
Microscopy: 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.”
A black-and-white microscopic image of alloy appearing as a spotted sphere with dense dendrites that creates a funky splotch-like effect.
Microscopy: 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.”
A microscopic image of powdery mildews with a brown center and transparent branches sprouting from it.
Microscopy: First place, Faculty and Staff: Scott LaGreca for “Erysiphe sp. nov. chasmothecium.”