Research in Focus

2022 winners announced

'Keeping It Together' by Lisa Kearney, a multi-element map of reef-rock produced using automated mineralogy techniques, has taken out Best in Show in this year's Research in Focus competition.

Other winners included:

People's Choice Award: 'SpiroArtis' by Dusan Bojic
QUT Digital Media Research Centre Prize for Best Media and Communication Visualisation: 'Improving Coverage of Older People in Australian News' by T.J. Thomson
QUT Centre for Materials Science Prize: 'Frozen Fractals All Around' by Konstantin Faershteyn
QUT Design Lab - Embodying Change Prize: 'SpiroArtis' by Dusan Bojic
QUT Centre for Robotics Prize: 'Mars Pixlise VR' by David Conroy.

'Keeping It Together' by Lisa Kearney

Top ten finalists

The Next Generation - John Griffin

SpiroArtis Image - Dusan Bojic

Osteons in focus - Flavia Medeiros Savi

Stay hungry, but don't stay foolish - Jayanti Mendhi

Keeping It Together - Lisa Kearney

Frozen fractals all around - Konstantin Faershteyn

Blossoms of the eye - Fazeleh Etebar

Illuminating Cancers - Akhilandeshwari Ravichandran

'Ghost Story': Innovations in the Integration of Augmented Reality and Performance - Kristen Maloney
WATCH VIDEO

Hypnotic Dance of the Polymers - Vedad Dzanic
WATCH VIDEO

Prizes

Best in show: $1,000
People's choice award: $500
QUT Design Lab - Embodying Change Prize: $500; The ethos and mission of the QUT Design Lab is 'change by design' and this prize acknowledges change as a critical part of research. The winning entry will creatively design for and envision change, considering themes such as possible futures, inclusivity and participation.
QUT Digital Media Research Centre Prize for Best Media and Communication Visualisation: $500; The most innovative use of data visualisation and clear and engaging media and communication research.
QUT Centre for Materials Science Prize: $500; The best visualisation of quality materials science research.
QUT Centre for Robotics Prize: $500; The best depiction of innovation in robotics.

Judges

The Research in Focus judging panel includes:

Associate Professor Jennifer MacLeod, School of Chemistry and Physics
Associate Professor Yi-Chin Toh, School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
Dr Anastasia Tyurina, School of Design
Ilana Bolingford, Centre for Robotics
Jessica Currier, Brand and Creative Studio

2021 winners gallery

First place: Collaborative Coral

Brett Lewis, Science Faculty

This is a confocal fluorescence light microscopy image of a single coral polyp (approx. 1mm). Its interlocking tissues connect it to the other 'thousands' of polyp clones that form a reef-building coral colony, which have been around since the dinosaurs and have built some of the most significant organically formed structures in history.

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Second place: Twitter Map

Timothy Graham, CIESJ Faculty

This image is a network map of coordinated, bot-like behaviour on Twitter during the first Presidential Debate of the 2016 US presidential election. This research contributes important new findings that further reveal the scale and severity of political manipulation on social media during the 2016 US presidential election.

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Third place: Hydrology of Media

Anastasia Tyurina, CIESJ Faculty

This is a coloured image of micro water droplets after evaporation, obtained using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), which is part of a research project that draws on the intersection of art, science, technology and human sciences from the standpoint of water.

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People's Choice Award: Flowers of Bone Regeneration

Jayanti Mendhi, Science Faculty

This is an image of a hydroxyapatite (HA) coating, using a process that mimics nature and allows to form in mineralised crystals of calcium phosphate that look like flowers blooming in a field. HA coatings have been used for bone regeneration in dental and orthopaedic implants for bone regeneration.

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Researcher Choice Award: Research out of Focus - Bone Jungle

Proudly sponsored by QUT Research Infrastructure

Flavia Savi, Engineering Faculty

This image shows new bone tissue being built following the reconstruction of a 6cm tibial bone defect with a medical grade polycaprolactone mesh scaffold. This demonstrates that using a scaffold guided bone tissue engineering approach can restore defects that would not heal otherwise.

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Centre for Materials Science Award: Metal Eggs

Proudly sponsored by Centre for Materials Science

Tristram Jenkins, Science Faculty

This image shows ‘egg-shaped’ spherically co-precipitated high-Ni NMC particles, a state-of-the-art high-energy density cathode material for lithium-ion batteries. The colours represent the material’s four metal components: Lithium (blue), Nickel (green), Manganese (pink) and Cobalt (red).

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