Congratulations to Bonnie Taylor-Blake in Mark Zylka’s lab for her first place win in the recent Art of Science Competition with her image “Skin: Branching Out” (below).

The Carolina Biosciences Alumni Reunion and Symposium sponsored the competition, a celebration of “the intersection of art and science,” open to all UNC students, staff and faculty. The contest asked entrants to consider the visual impact of their work, with a prompt to “look at your research through a creative eye and capture the art of your science.”

The 56 contest entries included still images, videos, paintings and sculptures. The top three images, along with 8 honorable mentions, were on display at the Carolina Biosciences Alumni Reunion & Symposium’s closing session in the Ackland Art Museum on May 17th. This reception event followed a symposium on the Past, Present and Future of Personalized Medicine which featured alumni speakers and a panel discussion. Other award winners were Lee Langer of the Pevny/Sulik labs for “Eye of the Beholder” (second place) and Jes Coyle in the Hurlbert lab for “Symbiotic Continent” (third place). The winning images and all the entries can be found at the Carolina Biosciences Reunion website.

The Carolina Biosciences Alumni Reunion and Symposium events were coordinated by the Office of Graduate Education with sponsorship from the School of Medicine, the Graduate School and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Like branches coming off a tree trunk, bundles of nerve fibers spread up and outwards to the skin surface. The endings of these nerve fibers sense cues from the environment, such as temperature and touch, and respond to injury-producing stimuli that lead to the sense of pain. A hair follicle (left) is encircled by nerve endings that detect movements of the hair itself. This image was acquired through the use of a fluorescent antibody that labels a specific protein expressed in such nerve fibers; this photograph represents a negative of that captured via confocal microscopy.