Cambridge academics win awards for striking images of their research.
The breadth of images and imagination exhibited demonstrate the talent, both scientific and artistic, that resides in our community.
Professor David Delpy, EPSRC’s Chief Executive
Like Aladdin of the lab a student appears to hover in mid-air unaided.
The image is one of two taken by University of Cambridge academics which were victorious in the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) science photography competition.
“Mathematical analysis can make you fly”, was taken by DAMTP’s Dr Carola-Bibiane Schoenlieb, Joana Grah and Kostas Papafitsoros and won the People category of the awards.
Congratulating the winners and entrants, Professor David Delpy, EPSRC’s Chief Executive, said: “The quality of the entries made judging extremely hard but very inspiring. The breadth of images and imagination exhibited demonstrate the talent, both scientific and artistic, that resides in our community.”
The flying image shows masters student Joana appearing to hover in front of an equation that explains how the trick is done.
Digital “inpainting” uses sophisticated mathematical algorithms to retouch digital images.
Here it was used to remove the stool on which Joana was sitting originally.
The second winning image, by Megan Davies Wykes, shows salt water accelerating into fresh water, illustrating what is known as Rayleigh-Taylor instability – which mixes two fluids of different densities.
In a Q&A on the image Megan said she was delighted to win the award.
During this phenomenon fluids form unpredictable patterns. Mixing is of great interest to oceanographers in their quest to understand the ocean and its effect on climate.
The competition’s five categories were: Weird and Wonderful, Discovery, Equipment, Innovation, and People.
The competition had over 250 entries which were drawn from researchers in receipt of EPSRC funding. The judges were: Martin Keene, Group Picture Editor, Press Association; Dr Richard Johnston, Lecturer, College of Engineering, Swansea University; and Professor David Delpy, EPSRC’s Chief Executive.
Overall winner was an image of a joke-telling robot, by Toby Harris, a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London’s Cognitive Science Research Group,
The first, second and third prize winning images with short descriptions are all available to download from the EPSRC’s website.