From left: BIRU Director Dr Gus Grey and Joscelin Smith
Members of the judging panel for the 2020 BIRU image competition were very impressed by the high quality of the entries this year. There was concern that the number of entries would be reduced and of lower quality due to the difficulties imposed on researchers by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there were more than 70 entries across the four categories from a wide range of research areas. It was a great relief also to be able to go ahead with the end of year Research Celebration and announce and congratulate the award winners in person.
The winner of the Hilary Holloway Prize for best image (and the Confocal Microscopy category) was Joscelin Smith, a PhD student from the Department of Physiology, supervised by Professor Johanna Montgomery. Joscelin’s image won points for composition as well as the labelling and imaging quality. In addition to receiving the Hilary Holloway Prize to keep for a year, Joscelin received a “Basket of Knowledge”.
Maryam Saberi, from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, was the winner of the Visualisation and Analysis category with a diffusion tensor MRI image, while Anusha Dravid, School of Pharmacy won the Light Microscopy category with an image of an iPSC-differentiated spinal motor neuron neurosphere. Hugh Glossop and Urawadee Rajchakit were the winners of the Electron Microscopy category with their image of Peptide-conjugated gold nanoparticles.
Six other images received highly commended or special mention awards.
Link to highly commended and special mention images
