Top sights of science

The winning entries in an international visualization contest prove that you can see good science at work in a variety of venues, ranging from cartoon strips to art galleries.

For the past seven years, the journal Science and the National Science Foundation have co-sponsored contests to recognize the best visual depictions of scientific phenomena - ranging from photos of scientific subjects to videos and interactives that explain concepts in science and engineering.

The winners of the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge focus on topics in biology and biomimetics, network science and nanotechnology, mathematics and medicine, environmental science and emergency response. The judging panel received 130 entries from 14 countries, 23 states plus the District of Columbia.

Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said the contest rewards scientists for "thinking outside the box" and revealing the beauty and wonder of science.

"The contest winners communicate difficult research in a way that the general public can understand," she said in a news release.

One of the winners, Harvard's Sung Hoon Kang, agreed that one of the main objectives of good visualization is to involve the public in the scientific process. "Public outreach has always been a weak side of science," he said. "By adding art and metaphors to our research portfolio, we, as citizens, can send a clear message to the world: Science - at its core - is focused on the problems of societal importance. This will work better than detailed (and often incomprehensible) scientific debates."

Along with colleagues Boaz Pokroy and Joanna Aizenberg, Hoon won first place in the challenge's photography category for a photomicrograph of plastic fingers cradling a green sphere (shown at the top of this item). Each of the fingers is only one-500th the diameter of a human hair. The picture, titled "Save Our Earth, Let's Go Green," illustrates a technique for polymer self-assembly and also makes a statement about sustainability.

"Each hair represents a person or an organization," Aizenberg told Science. "It shows our collaborative effort to hold up the planet and keep it running."

The places where the visualizations appeared are as varied as the subject matter. "Branching Morphogenesis," for example, is an 12-foot-high, 15-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep art installation created from curtains and 75,000 cable zip ties. Visitors to the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria, can walk right through the curtains to experience a large-scale simulation of human lung cells as they interact with each other.

Another winner, "Brain Development," is a comic strip by neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin and cartoonist Jorge Cham that explains how brains are born. The same duo does the geek-friendly "Piled Higher and Deeper" online strip as well as cartoons for Scientific American Mind. (Godwin talks about his SciAm contributions in this podcast.)

To get the full story on the winning entries, click through our slideshow, check out Science's Multimedia Center and visit NSF's Web site. For the record, here's the full list of winners in the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge:

Photography
First place:

• Sung Hoon Kang, Boaz Pokroy and Joanna Aizenberg of Harvard University for "Save Our Earth, Let's Go Green."

Honorable mentions (tie):

• Michael Zach of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point for "Microbe vs. Mineral: A Life and Death Struggle in the Desert."
• Russell Taylor, Briana Whitaker and Briana Carstens of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for "Flower Power."
• Heiti Paves and Birger Ilau of Tallinn University of Technology for "Self-Fertilization."

Illustration
First place (tie):

• Richard Palais and Luc Benard of the University of California at Irvine for "Kuen's Surface: A Meditation on Euclid, Lobachevsky and Quantum Fields."
• Peter Lloyd Jones, Andrew Lucia, Annette Fierro and Jenny E. Sabin of the University of Pennsylvania's Sabin + Jones Lab Studio for "Branching Morphogenesis."

Honorable mentions (tie):

• Dave Beck and Jennifer Jacquet of Clarkson University for "Jellyfish Burger."
• Mario De Stefano, Antonia Auletta and Carla Langella of the 2nd University of Naples for "Back to the Future."

Informational graphics
First place:

• Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham of Wake Forest University School of Medicine for "Brain Development."

Honorable mention:

• Erin Olson, Daphne Orlando, Gregg Hickey, Julia Tremaine, Martin Ramsden and Tim Manning of R&D Systems Inc. for "Regulation of the Cell Cycle and DNA Damage-Induced Checkpoint Activation."

Interactive media
First place:

• Jeremy Friedberg and Andrea Bielecki of Spongelab Interactive for "Genomics Digital Lab: Cell Biology."

Non-interactive media
First place (tie):

• Harmony Starr and Molly Malone of University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center for "The Epigenetics of Identical Twins."
• Daniel Grady, Christian Thiemann and Dirk Brockmann of Northwestern University for "Follow the Money: Human Mobility and Effective Communities."

Honorable mentions (tie):

• Nils Sparwasser, Gregor Hochleiter, Christian Gredel, Hartmut Friedl and Thorsten Andresen of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for "Decision Support System for Tsunami Early Warning."
• Stacy Jannis, William Dempsey, Rebekah Fredenburg, Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Creighton Phelps and Stephen Snyder of Jannis Productions for "Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer's Disease."

Correction for 11:59 p.m. ET Feb. 22: I've fixed the reference to Ars Electronica to note that the center is located in Austria, not Germany.

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