The Art of Engineering and Architecture research photo contest is an opportunity for Faculty of Engineering faculty, students and staff to showcase their research, scholarly and artistic work in a compelling and vibrant way.
Congratulations to our winners!
Photo by Estatira Amirieh, Drew Davidson and Milad Kamkar
First-place: Lab bench nanoforest
Picture a forest that emerges not from nature, but from a laboratory bench. In this image, delicate, tree-like structures rise vertically from a polymer nanocomposite surface, forming a miniature woodland of fibers. These formations were created through electrospinning, a process where a liquid polymer solution is pulled by electric fields into ultra-thin threads that solidify as they travel through the air. While electrospinning typically produces flat, uniform nonwoven mats, subtle changes to the solution’s chemistry and flow caused the fibers to leap upward, clustering and branching into complex, three-dimensional architectures. The resulting “forests” reveal how small adjustments in materials and process conditions can transform a simple mat into a hierarchically porous scaffold. Beyond their surprising beauty, these structures are directly connected to research on filtration, tissue scaffolds, and energy materials, demonstrating how precise engineering and curiosity can converge to create designs that are at once functional, intricate, and unexpectedly artistic.
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Photo by Mikhail Malmyguine
Second-place: Peacock mountain
This is a digital microscopy image of a laser weld produced by the laser directed energy deposition (LDED) process. The particular feature in question is the end of the weld which causes the enlarged circular shape.
The bright protrusion in the center is a weld termination defect where surface tension forces created a bulge from the material that was undercut from the neighbouring regions of the weld, while the colourful streaks are iron and titanium oxides of various thicknesses. The laser weld is part of a process window optimization series of experimental trials.
Photo by Olivia Graham and Gaya Shnayder
Third-place: Nanopattern rainbows
Cells in our body are surrounded by myriads of physical and chemical cues that help dictate their growth and behaviour. Topography is one of these key cues; however, when mammalian cells are grown in a lab, it is typically on smooth plastic surfaces that fail to replicate the complex landscapes cells experience in nature. Our image shows a nanopatterned tissue culture polystyrene chip. The nanopattern on the chip mimics the natural microenvironment cells encounter while growing on them which is essential for tissue engineering applications. The nanopatterns diffract light producing the mesmerizing rainbow, “holographic”, colours seen in the image.
Photo by Shakiba Samsami
First-place: Chaotic but not disordered
Submission by Shakiba Samsami (CHE graduate student)
Nature has learned to be simple and energy-efficient in creating multi-material architectures. Chaos is one of nature's key inspiring strategies that facilitates the creation of multi-layered structures. Inspired by nature, chaotic printing is a novel approach that enables us to develop predictable multilayered filaments with finely tunable internal micro-architecture in a cost-effective way. This straightforward technique uses laminar chaotic flows to create highly ordered structures with extensive shared interfaces that can be mathematically modeled and predicted. This fluorescence microscopic view of our multi-layered filament exhibits how simplicity generates complexity. Our system allows us to co-extrude two inks continuously with only one printhead. Such structure can go as far as the depth of the synergy between the involved materials. Also, it endows the final structure with vast amounts of interface between two materials.
Photo by Milad Kamkar
Second-place: Ultralight weight 3D printed aerogel
Submission by Milad Kamkar (CHE professor)
A photo captured with a smartphone showcases a 3D printed aerogel resting delicately on a dandelion clock, vividly illustrating the remarkable lightweight nature of these structures. This intricate scaffold is composed of sustainable nanomaterials, including plant-based cellulose nanocrystals and highly conductive electrochemically-synthesized graphene nanosheets (EGNs). Notably, the EGNs were synthesized in water without the use of any chemicals, rendering this aerogel one of the most sustainable electrically conductive aerogels to date. These innovative ultra-light aerogels have the potential for diverse applications, such as lightweight electronics or as shields to mitigate invisible electromagnetic pollution.
Photo by Cassandra Lesage Fongue
Third-place: Guano on silver
Submission by Cassandra Lesage Fongue (ARCH graduate student)
In the photographic process, an image is created when light reacts with a light sensitive surface. Silver halides are permanently converted to elemental silver, matter is changed by other non-human matter. Used without a camera, analog film is exposed to weeks worth of UV light, rain, erosion, and decomposition. The chemistry of the soil acts similarly to a photographic developer to alter the colour of the film, and mycorrhiza from the guano rich environment bloomed within the gelatin silver emulsion.
Used in this manner, the film surfaces an image of processes invisible to the eye or camera based photographic imaging.
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Photo by David Correa & Simon Poppinga
First-place: Biomimetic compliant mechanism
Submission by David Correa (ARCH associate professor)
The opening of the lily cultivar Lilium "Casa Blanca" (top) serves as a biomimetic role model for a 3D-printed actuator (bottom). The differentiated edge growth of the petals allows the flowers to rapidly open; this kinematic model is matched by the 3D-printed actuator through water-driven expansion within the same functional region. Inspired by nature, these biobased structures can change shape in response to relative humidity changes.
This is a sustainable approach that uses nature's ingenuity to create actuators that do not need fossil fuels, external electrical input or failure-prone sensors and motors.
Photo by Xianyu (Mabel) Song & Zhao Pan
Second-place: Swirls in a martini glass
Submission by Zhao Pan (MME assistant professor)
We accidentally invented a new drink for Christmas when studying sloshing. When shaking a liquid-filled conical glass, side to side, the fluid inside moves back and forth and creates two focused jets flowing from the rim of the glass to the center. When the jets collide, they redirect, separate, and roll up to form four vortex cells (see the swirls in the glass in the foreground). Pearl dust and red and green food dye is used to visualize this nonlinear flow pattern generated by the linear excitation. This “drinking” trick demonstrates similar physics as rip currents and slosh in tankers.
The key mixology is extra syrup, no olives, and the gentle linear back-and-forth motion with a shallow martini glass. On St Patrick’s Day, you may only want to use green colours to create a four-leaf clover in the glass by shaking at the resonant frequency.
Photo by Supun Pieris, Sean D. Peterson & Serhiy Yarusevych
Third-place: A dancing bubble
Submission by Supun Pieris (MME PhD student)
A snapshot of a laminar separation bubble is visualized using a trail of smoke. From left to right, the flow transitions from laminar to turbulent. In the transition region, the fluid layer becomes unstable and develops a wave-like pattern, which eventually results in the shedding of vortices. These vortices evolve downstream, with some merging together, and burst into smaller vortices. Laminar separation bubbles typically form on low-speed wings like those on drone aircraft and reduce flight performance. Our research focuses on understanding the flow physics of such bubbles to mitigate negative effects on aerial vehicle performance through flow control.
A smoke trail generated using water-glycol on a thin, heated wire is imaged with a digital camera. The smoke is illuminated with a thin laser sheet formed using optical lenses and synchronized with image acquisition to obtain a high-contrast black and white image of the smoke trail.