Images of Research Contest
Knowledge is beautiful. USask researchers know it better than anyone.
Each year, University of Saskatchewan students, staff, faculty and alumni capture the impact of their research, scholarly and artistic works—demonstrating how their work made a difference to society, the economy and global challenges—with an image and a simple description.
The results are nothing short of amazing.
The contest is now closed. View the Winners below!
2026 contest results
Organized by USask's Research Profile and Impact team, the 12th Annual Images of Research contest featured:
- Nearly 110 image entries across five submission categories, from students, faculty, staff and alumni representing 9 USask colleges and schools.
- Seven judging panels, comprised of faculty, staff and students from across campus.
- Nearly 1,583 public votes for 'Viewers' Choice.'
- Nearly 19,000 views of the contest online.
Capturing the Radiance of USask’s Beloved Airplane Room
Ian Stavness, Faculty, Computer Science, College of Arts and Science
(Winner, Grand Prize)
Rendering of a 3D radiance-field capture of the Henry Taube Lecture Theatre in the Thorvaldson Building at the University of Saskatchewan. This near-visually-perfect virtual replica of the theatre can be explored like a video game or viewed in immersive Virtual Reality, allowing off-campus community members to visit this treasured space from a far. The upper-left cutaway reveals the millions of optimized 3D points that conform to every nook and cranny of the room, outlining individual desks, the lamps and projectors on the wall, and even the paper airplanes embedded in the ceiling. Our research in 3D capture aims to comprehensively measure buildings for historical preservation, plants for detailed phenotyping, and natural spaces for artistic expression
Palm Leaves and Paper Empires: Legal Pluralism in Colonial South Asia
Warsha Mushtaq, Undergraduate student, Department of History, College of Arts and Science
(Winner, Arts in Focus)
This palm-leaf manuscript, accessed through Special Collections at the University of Saskatchewan, is part of a wider manuscript tradition in South Asia. For centuries, legal records were inscribed on dried palm leaves by local scribes and recognized within communities. When European colonial powers expanded into South Asia, they sought to privilege paper over palm leaves and to make land ownership more legible to the state. Yet colonial rule did not replace local law. Palm-leaf and paper records existed side by side. Indigenous and colonial legal systems operated at the same time, creating a layered and contested legal order.
Silver Birch Lights
Rowan Pantel, PhD student, Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Graduate and Post Doctoral Studies
(Runner-up, Arts in Focus)
Using natural materials as inspiration for new lighting techniques in theatre lies at the heart of this artistic work and research. How do new ideas and images surface through close engagement with the landscapes and materials that surround us? By setting these limits, the process becomes far more generative than beginning with a blank canvas. The continual discovery of unexpected worlds within the everyday environment remains constantly compelling and inspiring. “Silver Birch Lights” aimed to explore how location can affect the materiality of the birch bark. The work’s reflection and mirroring are meant to call back to the water that shaped and created the hollowed birch tree core. The effect of the water and natural decomposition is what allows light to then pass through the birch bark’s natural striations. Installation Materials: Birch Bark, LED light source
Ritualistic Performance
Atrayee Basu, Master’s student, Art and Art History, School for the Arts and the Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Science
(Winner, Community Impact)
Through the material's tactility, I seek to capture moments that feel sacred, instances where touch affiliates with something beyond the physical, gesturing toward the divine. In these shared gestures, creation becomes a form of communion: an act that strengthens bonds, deepens connections, and reaffirms the collective spirit that sustains community building. This is the trust that community functions as a spiritual foundation—an unseen manner that guides the materialization of new trailblazers, mentors, and nurturers. Each act of making becomes a moment of active formation, where creation is both material and metaphysical. The fingers serve as networks of intention, carrying a quiet devotion as they shape, mould, and respond to the world. Data collected during my field research in Kolkata, India
Childhood Amnesia
Gabriela Sieminska-Hauck, Alumni, Art and Art History, School for the Arts
(Runner-up, Community Impact)
Childhood amnesia describes the neurological phenomenon in which early memories fade or become difficult to access. This community-based research engaged 99 participants across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia in recovering childhood memories through touch and storytelling. Participants recalled early experiences while shaping clay, transforming recollections into tangible forms. Their recorded voices were presented alongside the sculptures, creating a shared archive of lived memory. Informed by neuroscience research on memory formation and the limbic system, the project explored how touch and gesture support recall. The process fostered storytelling, reflection, and intergenerational exchange, demonstrating how collaborative art research can strengthen communities by preserving memory and supporting collective well-being.
Searching for Connection
Marissa Jones, Master’s student, Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology, College of Medicine
(Winner, More than Meets the Eye)
A swine airway organoid sits in the distance as a sensory neuron begins to chart its course toward it. Captured by spinning-disk confocal fluorescence microscopy, peripherin-labelled neurites glow green as they extend and gather at the organoid boundary, drawn toward this living target. Blue nuclei (DAPI) are scattered, while red actin reveals the scaffolding that shapes this miniature airway system. This co-culture model is built to explore if nerves form selective connections with specific airway epithelia cell types and whether those connections help regulate ion transport in the lung.
Whispers of Defence
Jingpu Song, Staff, Department of Biology, College of Arts and Science
(Runner-up, More than Meets the Eye)
Like a constellation written in light, an Orion-shaped pattern shimmers across the surface of a living leaf. What seems celestial emerges from a hidden world, where plant epidermal cells awaken to an unseen threat. As a pathogen (green) attacks, a silent conversation begins. Cells sense danger and quietly coordinate a defence beneath the leaf’s calm surface. Cells that have heard the alarm and activated their immune defences are marked by bright cyan nuclei, while their chloroplast “factories” (magenta) start producing protective chemicals. This image reveals a microscopic world where life responds not with noise, but with whispers. In this unseen realm, biological patterns echo cosmic forms, reminding us that even the smallest cells join a luminous choreography of perception, adaptation, and defence. The full story will soon appear in Nature Communications.
Survival Mode
Gabriela Sieminski-Hauck, Alumni, Art and Art History, School for the Arts
(Winner, Research in Action)
This apple remains frozen on its branch through a Saskatchewan winter, its tissues fractured by ice crystal formation during repeated freeze–thaw cycles. In temperatures below –30°C, cellular water expands, rupturing membranes and accelerating decomposition. Meanwhile, the tree enters deep dormancy, slowing metabolism, sealing vascular pathways, and conserving energy until spring. My research studies living organisms in extreme prairie climates, observing how stress reshapes biological form. These transformations inform my art practice and therapeutic inquiry: how cycles of rupture, suspension, and renewal in nature parallel psychological endurance. By translating organic structures into sculptural and expressive forms, I explore how creative processes can model resilience. What appears frozen and lifeless is not failure; it is adaptation in progress.
Inside a Queen Cell
Serhii Kondratiuk, Master’s student, Veterinary Pathology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine
(Runner-up, Research in Action)
After experimentally removing the queens from colonies, we returned to measure the number, length, and width of emergency queen cells constructed by the worker bees. The image captures one of these cells after it was naturally opened from the side, providing evidence that a newly emerged queen had hatched and soon will eliminate her rival. The torn wax wall reveals the precise architecture of the cell and highlights the intense reproductive competition within the colony. By documenting these structures, we can study how colonies regulate queen replacement, manage reproductive investment, and ensure survival under stress. This research allows us to witness evolution and social conflict unfold within just a few centimeters of wax.
Summer is Fleeting
Lindsay Carlson, PhD student, Department of Biology, College of Arts and Science
(Winner, From the Field)
Blink, and you’ll miss summer in the Arctic. The pace of life is frenetic, even manic, to make the most of the abundant but ephemeral resources. The same is true for the scientists who work there: we make the most of every moment in our short field season. I took a break from cleaning nets after dinner to watch two parasitic jaegers (Stercorarius parasiticus) fight over the remains of an Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus). The purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) hadn’t even been in bloom the day before, but it was nearly time for me, and the birds, to fly south again.
What you Cannot See
Jessa-lynne Robb, Undergraduate student, Department of Plant Science, College of Agriculture and Bioresources
(Runner-up, From the Field)
These purple barley heads glow in the prairie light, appearing calm and untouched. But in disease research fields near Aberdeen, Saskatchewan, crops like these are purposefully challenged with disease. We spray the crops with Fusarium and other pathogens to evaluate which varieties, and genetic lines can withstand infection. Fusarium head blight threatens cereal production by reducing yield and contaminating grain with mycotoxins that affect both human and animal health. Resistance isn't always visible to the eye. It exists in genetics, in subtle physiological responses, and in heads that continue to fill grain despite exposure.
Honeybee Snack Break During a Busy Day Foraging
Bree Bilton, Master’s student, Veterinary Pathology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine
(Winner, Best Description)
European honeybees gather around a ‘trough’ of sugar syrup, happily consuming their favourite meal on a warm summer’s day. Sunlight gently reflects off their wings as other bees are busy at work deep within the hive, storing food for the winter. Across Canada, however, honeybees face a wide range of diseases. To protect against nosema, a sporulating disease which attacks the honeybee’s digestive system, beekeepers mix antibiotics into sugar syrup to feed their hives. As we theorize that these antibiotics may also linger in honey destined for grocery stores, we partnered with the CFIA’s Center for Veterinary Drug Residues to determine whether antibiotic residues are present in honey samples kept at different temperatures and lighting conditions.
The Hidden Architecture Within
Sidra Uzair, PhD student, Nutritional Epidemiology, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition
(Runner-up, Best Description)
At first glance, human bone appears rigid, something that simply holds the body upright. As we zoom in, it reveals itself as a living, dynamic tissue in 3D imaging, more like a city built by bone cells that remember every step we have taken, reflecting a lifetime of movement, loading, and adaptation. Each filament records gravity we negotiated, and nourishment with proteins, vitamins and minerals that transformed into strength. Delicate yet stubborn, it reminds us that this structure is not solid but woven and survives through constant loss and rebuilding. Through long-term fermented and non-fermented dairy supplementation in everyday life, we are observing how this landscape reshapes itself, whether connections thicken, spaces widen, and balance finds a new geometry.
Whispers of Defence
Jingpu Song, Staff, Department of Biology, College of Arts and Science
(Winner, Viewers' Choice)
Like a constellation written in light, an Orion-shaped pattern shimmers across the surface of a living leaf. What seems celestial emerges from a hidden world, where plant epidermal cells awaken to an unseen threat. As a pathogen (green) attacks, a silent conversation begins. Cells sense danger and quietly coordinate a defence beneath the leaf’s calm surface. Cells that have heard the alarm and activated their immune defences are marked by bright cyan nuclei, while their chloroplast “factories” (magenta) start producing protective chemicals. This image reveals a microscopic world where life responds not with noise, but with whispers. In this unseen realm, biological patterns echo cosmic forms, reminding us that even the smallest cells join a luminous choreography of perception, adaptation, and defence. The full story will soon appear in Nature Communications.
Flaxseed Gum: Microplastic-Catching Net
Candy Ding, Staff, Food and Bioproduct Sciences, College of Agriculture and Bioresources
(Runner-up, Viewers' Choice)
This Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) image reveals how flaxseed gum forms a lace-like network capable of capturing spherical polystyrene microplastics. My research explores whether flaxseed gum can prevent microplastics from crossing the gut wall and entering human cells. By showing how the flaxseed gum tightly wraps and immobilizes microplastics at the microscopic level, the image illustrates a simple idea with significant potential: a plant-based fiber may act as a biological filter within the digestive system, blocking harmful microplastics from passing into the human body.