Faculty/Staff Photography, 2nd Place. Michelle Jewell. Dr. Skylar Hopkins and Sophie Meng record the temperature of caves and certain depths from the opening. They will see how increasingly hot and humid summers at the surface impact these subterranean habitats and their otherworldly inhabitants.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Microscopy, Honorable Mention
Sreekiran Raveendran Pillai. Icephobic coatings can delay the formation and prevent the rapid growth of ice. The image shows an icephobic coating on glass substrate, wherein ice formation and propagation is evident on the uncoated side. The pine tree structure is the ice propagation on glass with the roots on the glass interface, which cannot intrude the surface further due to the presence of icephobic coating.Graduate Student/Postdoc Microscopy, Honorable Mention
Yosra Kotb. My research focuses on unraveling the molecular reasons behind the superior chemical and mechanical performance of bisphenol A (BPA)-based epoxy coatings. These coatings are extremely widespread in food can linings and are facing heightened scrutiny due to their toxic precursor, BPA. In order to find an equally-performing, safer alternative, we have to understand the structure-property relationships behind the excellent corrosion protection these coatings provide. In this image, a BPA-based coating was exposed to a simulated aggressive acidic food environment to initiate its degradation that proceeds as blisters scattered across the surface. With this experiment and others, we are able to analyze the polymeric network aspects behind how these coatings protect the underlying substrate to design innovative and innocuous alternatives.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Graphics, Honorable Mention. Margaret Lawrimore. Charleston, South Carolina is increasingly prone to flooding from sea-level rise and storms and its citizens are further exposed with more urbanization. Charleston is projected to experience up to 233 high-tide flood events per year by 2050, compared to only 14 in 2019. Additionally, the Charleston area is growing three times faster than the national average, putting pressure on the city’s capacity to effectively manage flooding. Charleston highlights the struggles many communities across the country are facing as climate change continues to exacerbate flooding. This image displays the projected flood risk in Charleston by 2050. Developed land is shown in white, while flood probability is shown in blue with brighter blue showing higher flood risk and darker blue showing lower flood risk. Development was projected using the FUTURES 3.0 land change model and flood probabilities were provided by First Street Foundation.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Microscopy, Honorable Mention. Lucille Verster. In response to COVID-19, face mask production and single-use plastic has increased, resulting in an increase of microplastics released into the environment. Thus, studying how microplastics are formed from degraded nonwovens, like these polypropylene face masks, may give an insight as how to remediate these particles from water sources and other natural surroundings.Undergraduate Student Microscopy, 1st Place. Sydney Andersen. Enhanced polarized optical microscopy image of a zinc chloride hydrate crystal. We are studying crystal growth from solutions with varying zinc chloride concentrations to better understand the mechanisms of crystal growth to develop an improved crystal growth model.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Photography, Honorable Mention. Muhammad Ali. This image shows the facility of the chicken education unit (poultry farms) of North Carolina State University. During my experiment, I was raising broilers in these poultry houses. This beautiful scene was captured near sunset but it is difficult to tell just by viewing the image whether it is sunset or sunrise time. This research facility is a league of its own among the universities of the USA and is equipped with all the latest technology to raise broilers, layers, and breeders with all approved standard protocols.
Undergraduate Student Photography, Honorable Mention. Courtney Smith. The emerald ash borer (EAB) is an invasive wood-boring beetle killing our ash trees. The immature stages (larvae) feed beneath the bark of ash trees, cutting off nutrient flow and eventually killing the trees. Because these beetles are so destructive, researchers have studied methods of killing it. I am currently a first-year graduate student, but this photo was taken during my undergraduate research at NC State in 2021. As a part of this project, we debarked ash trees to collect emerald ash borer larvae and measure them to determine which larval stage they were in at different times of the year. Doing so allowed us to learn more about the development time of the EAB, which helps appropriately time management strategies. While debarking an ash tree, I found this EAB poking its head out of an exit hole, ready to emerge.Undergraduate Student Photography, 2nd Place. Darius Ledbetter. The picture above features one of many Loblolly pine seedlings that have been planted in Schenck forest, right outside of NC State’s Campus. Loblolly Pine, also known as Pinus taeda, is native to all of North Carolina and is a large benefactor to the lumber industry as well as filtering mass amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Soon, my research partners and I will plant industrial hemp alongside them. Similarly, Industrial hemp can be incredibly versatile and aid in the removal of excess carbon dioxide as well as textiles. We will monitor their growth weekly and observe their quality as they grow. The aim of our research is to determine whether these two species will benefit from growing together. If so, these two plants would have a positive effect on air quality and agricultural economics.
Faculty/Staff Photography, Honorable Mention. Taylor Pardue. Members of a prescribed-fire team watch the smoke swirl around a young longleaf pine. Longleafs and many other plant species in North Carolina’s Coastal Plain require frequent burning to eliminate competing vegetation, spur on their seed production, and reduce the leaf litter around them so catastrophic fires don’t take place. Knowing when and how to properly burn an area, and teaching the next generation of forestry professionals these skills, makes the work done in the College of Natural Resources invaluable in this age of ongoing climate change.
Undergraduate Student Graphics, 1st Place
Sophia Li. American cities are rapidly growing and development quickly follows it. However, their growth can impact local communities near downtown’s expansion. The developments frequently decimate low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods near the city center which silences and erases displaced residents. The economic and demographic change associated with gentrification has been accelerating. Racial diversity usually comes to white neighborhoods, but since the early 2000s this trend has reversed. Suburbs now grow more diverse as Hispanics, Asian-American, and African-American families move into them as they are pushed out of city centers. South Park, a historically black neighborhood directly south of Downtown Raleigh, is undergoing demographic change as white neighbors move in, ushering in higher home prices and increasing property taxes and displacing long term residents.Undergraduate Student Microscopy, 2nd Place. Ian Mercer. Liquid Phase Epitaxy (LPE) is a cost-effective technique for depositing a material, usually a semiconductor, onto a substrate and gives interesting properties. Similar to growing sugar crystals on a string in water super saturated with sugar, LPE can grow ordered crystals on a substrate.
When depositing materials, epitaxial just means ordered. In other words the material deposited at the atomic level is all in the same orientation and geometric lattice. However, for LPE to do this, the temperature of say a metal must be exactly right, thus it will match the geometric lattice of the substrate it is on top of.
In this image, a semiconductor deposited on top of a substrate has matched the substrates lattice in a epitaxial fashion only in specific areas, meaning locally epitaxial. This is why there are mainly pyramids, the material on top of the substrate is matching the substrates internal lattice.
Undergraduate Student Photography, 1st Place. Kenzie Cromer. I have been lucky enough to do research at the Duke Lemur Center since my sophomore year of college, under the guidance of Dr. Lisa Paciulli. This spring, I visited the lemurs in person for the first time since March 2020. One of the Coquerel’s sifakas (Propithecus coquereli), Gabe, was a frequent visitor to my field chair during 2018–2019, when I had the opportunity to record and analyze vocalizations from free-ranging ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta). At the time, Gabe was an infant; he now has two offspring of his own, Felix and Camilla. While I was in the forest this spring, Gabe and Felix came down from their tree and watched me, eye-level, for several minutes. I would like to think Gabe remembered me––that strange bipedal primate who had met him years earlier––and was introducing me to the new generation. This particular photo shows Felix looking up at his father.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Photography, 1st Place. Emily Nastase. Many habitats in North Carolina are managed with prescribed fire. Prescribed fire is a process that thins out accumulated biomass, encourages biodiversity, and returns nutrients back into the soil. Landscapes rebound quickly from the burning – in just a matter of weeks, the affected area is lush and thriving with diverse flora. Early successional, fire-dependent grasslands, such as the one depicted in this photograph, provide critical nesting habitat for many species, including the Henslow’s Sparrow. The Henslow’s Sparrow is a species of special concern in North Carolina due to its limited habitat range and declining population numbers. This photograph was captured during a nest searching survey in May 2022.Undergraduate Student Microscopy, Honorable Mention. Courtney Smith. The elongate hemlock scale (EHS) is a non-native scale insect that feeds on Fraser fir Christmas trees. The scale insect is unlikely to kill the trees, but it impacts their aesthetic quality, causing needles to brown. North Carolina ranks second in the United States for Christmas tree production. As such, it is important to find management methods for the EHS. Aphytis melinus is a parasitoid wasp that uses scale insects as hosts. The wasps lay their eggs under the cover of scale insects, and upon hatching, the wasps eat the scales, killing them. We tested whether Aphytis melinus would use the EHS as a host. The image shows a wasp on an adult female EHS, which is feeding on a Fraser fir needle. While Aphytis melinus did not appear to use the EHS as a host within the lab, we hope to do field studies in the future.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Microscopy, 1st Place. Cyrus Cao. Our project aims to develop a new toolbox of methods for efficient investigation of the interactions and biological stability of viruses in suspension and on surfaces. Advanced technologies, like dynamic light scattering, enable us to build knowledge on how various chemicals change virus surface properties and thus their behavior. Then, this knowledge further allows the development of viral surrogates that share similar behavior as the actual virus.
Undergraduate Student Video, 1st Place
Sydney Andersen. Polarized optical microscopy of the crystallization and subsequent melt of a zinc chloride hydrate crystal. We are studying crystal growth from solutions with varying zinc chloride concentrations to better understand the mechanisms of crystal growth to develop an improved crystal growth model.Graduate Student/Postdoc Photography, Honorable Mention. Steven Chavez. My research in the DDes Program at NC State is based on urban waterways. This photograph was taken from a bridge crossing the highly urbanized Los Angeles River. The purpose of the photograph is to bring attention to the unique beauty of urban waterways to hopefully influence the reprogramming of urban river bridges to include being multipurpose destinations rather than single purpose crossings.
Faculty/Staff Photography, 1st Place. David Suchoff. The market for cannabidiol (CBD) has been highly volatile, leaving many hemp farmers wondering whether the sun is rising or setting on this crop. Those farmers who continue to produce floral hemp depend on results from NC State’s floral hemp variety trials (pictured here in Salisbury, NC). These trials are conducted across the state to evaluate variety performance and regional fit. Results are shared through NC Cooperative Extension and allow farmers to select the appropriate variety for their unique production systems.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Graphics, 1st Place. Ben Coleman. The horrific events of the 2015 Charleston SC Massacre, the 2017 Charlottesville VA Unite the Right Rally, and the 2020 murder of George Flyod in Minneapolis MN are mapped in relation to reactionary monument removal across the US visualizing how these tragedies sparked nation-wide outcry against racist ideologies perpetuated throughout the country and embodied in the confederate monuments. This reactionary monument removal is contextualized in a broader history of systemic racism by visualizing racial diversity and wealth through school demographics to highlight educational and economic inequity patterns within communities that have removed confederate monuments vs those who have not.Graduate Student/Postdoc Graphics, 2nd Place. Susmita Patil. The first Railroad opened in 1827 and by the 1840s Rail networks connected major US cities. During the civil war, railroads were an important factor in transporting logistical support to the armies and they were also vital to the economies of the divided nation. Railroads played an important role in deciding where the battles were fought and where the men and materials were moved. Some of the longest railroads were built in the South and nearly all of them had been constructed with slave labor. These maps intend to visualize the growth and change in the railway systems from 1840 to 2017. These maps show the importance of the railroad during the Civil War for major Confederate cities and battlefields. They collectively suggest a connection between confederate railroad lines and where monuments were erected over time.
Faculty/Staff Video, 1st Place. Jennifer Landin. This interdisciplinary research analyzes stories of Great Serpent Creators from cultures all over the world. We propose that many of these stories are based on whales, rather than snakes. The Serpent Creators often have very non-serpent traits like horns, ears, hair, or feathers. Since breaching whales usually land on their backs, their flippers can appear like horns or ears. Baleen, mouth structures used to filter some whales’ food, often appears like hair or feathers.
Our research focuses on links between these stories, each culture’s location, and the prevalence of nearby snakes, whales, fossils, and other life forms thought to have inspired these deities.
Whales have inspired awe in every culture. Their size and power could mean danger or prosperity for subsistence cultures. Those cultures practicing agriculture could use whale migrations to forecast seasonal weather patterns.Faculty/Staff Photography, Honorable Mention. Daniela Jones. Driving through the countryside of eastern North Carolina, it’s easy to believe each agricultural field looks exactly like the next. With the unique birds-eye perspective provided by drones, we can visualize just how unique and diverse each field truly is. This image is a clear illustration of the high soil variability and complexity that our farmers manage year-round as national leaders of tobacco and sweetpotato producers. In this image, sweetpotato growers are preparing a field for the growing season. Drone imagery helps us understand the complexities of soil characteristics and the effects it has on crop development. Sweet-APPS, an NC State research team, is pairing data collection with drones, satellite images, optical sensors, and other sensor technologies with advanced computer vision models to investigate the phenotypic responses (or observable characteristics) from these environmental variations.Graduate Student/Postdoc Microscopy, 2nd Place
Lilian Okello. FE-SEM image of the outer surface of a 3D printed box. The box was printed with ink that consists of cured NdFeB-embedded PDMS microbeads capillary-bridged with uncured PDMS liquid precursor to make a Homocomposite Capillary Paste for 3D printing (HCP-3DP). Pneumatically driven extrusion is done at 60 psi. Printed structures are heat-cured overnight at 55 °C. Size of microbeads is ~10 µm.Graduate Student/Postdoc Photography, 2nd Place
Andrew Howell. Giant Salvinia is an invasive, free-floating aquatic fern that has colonized several wetland sites through the southern United States. Native to South America, this aquatic weed quickly forms dense floating mats that disrupts irrigation schedules, clogs drainages, and limits recreational opportunity. Further, giant salvinia depletes available oxygen and blocks sunlight for fish and other aquatic species. Once established, the floating fern is difficult to control due to the complexities of the waterways it can occupy and it’s ability to free-float to other sites downstream of the infestation.
Research was conducted using satellite and unoccupied aerial systems (drones) to gauge a recent infestation of giant salvinia in North Carolina. Mapping infestation sites is important to develop eradication protocols and guide plant management direction. Currently, aerial imagery provides resource managers with an opportunity to evaluate what tactics work, were new infestations arise, and produce quantitative graphics used to inform stakeholders.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Video, 2nd Place. Christopher Brewer. Synthesis of new fluorescent dyes is of interest for improving organic LED (OLED) technology. To purify the compounds, it is easiest to work with them if they are dissolved in solution. However, some of the compounds have very low solubility. Instead of using massive volumes of solvent to dissolve the compounds, which would be wasteful and challenging to work with, a technique called Soxhlet extraction can be used. The upper portion of the apparatus contains the fluorescent dye and the bottom potion contains the solvent. The solvent is distilled from the bottom portion to the upper portion and some of the compound will dissolve. Once filled to a certain height, the liquid will siphon down. Then clean solvent is once again distilled to the upper portion and the cycle repeats until fully dissolved.
Graduate Student/Postdoc Video, 1st Place. Wen Rivero. Plasma is the 4th state of matter, an ionized gas that constitutes most of the matter in the universe. In the lab, we can create plasma at cold temperature and atmospheric pressure. When we create plasma, we create sanitizing compounds that make the strips change color to purple, yellow, and green. In the future, we can replace the white strips with food, and use Plasma to make food safer!
