Follow a fly, see temperature, & watch germination happen

Upper limit telescope, lower limit microscope—that’s one way to describe the human eye. NC State researchers regularly push through these limits working in fields such as Life Sciences, Entomology, Agricultural Engineering, Geospatial Analytics, and many more. Discoveries are made by looking deep into the essence of a thing or by visualizing it from a new perspective. And what researchers see is often spectacular.

Opening Monday, Oct. 22, the exhibit “Envisioning Research: Annual Research Image Contest, 2016–18” celebrates the artistic imagery that comes from research and scholarship on campus. Shown on the walls of the D. H. Hill Jr. Library Gallery and the dynamic screen in the Hunt Library iPearl Immersion Theater, this exhibit gathers the best of the first three years of the Envisioning Research program, an annual campus-wide competition and showcase of the winning images and videos. The exhibit runs through March 2019.

Taken by graduate students and postdocs, researchers, and faculty and staff in the course of their work, these stunning images range from a fly inside a Venus Flytrap, to the swirl of sea surface temperature along the Gulf Stream, to a visualization of the patterns of pedestrians through Victoria Square in Adelaide, Australia. You’ll see conductive synthetic fibers from cutting-edge textiles research and the surface oxidation of liquid metals that only biomolecular engineers get to glimpse. This exhibit displays how much specialized seeing is a part of thinking and doing at NC State.

To celebrate the exhibit, there will be a series of lightning talks by exhibiting students and faculty on Monday, Oct. 29 from 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m in the D. H. Hill Jr. Auditorium. Speakers will include:

• Natalie Nelson, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences/College of Engineering, Biological and Agricultural Engineering
• Amber Hubbard, College of Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Josh Gray, College of Natural Resources, Center for Geospatial Analytics
• Matthew Bertone, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Entomology and Plant Pathology

Started in 2016, Envisioning Research is a collaboration between the NCSU Libraries, the Office of Research and Innovation (formerly ORIED), the Graduate School, University Communications, and the College of Sciences. The program was born out of a desire to make NC State research more accessible by using art as a medium to explain complex discoveries.