Showcasing the Beauty of Science

The College of Sciences created posters that celebrate the beauty of research and showcase the exciting work of our community. See below to learn more about each of the poster images.

Biological Sciences

Biological Illustration
This image shows a red-eared slider, a species of turtle is native to the Mississippi River region. The artist, NC State evolutionary biology and ecology alumnus Paul Martineau, drew the turtle as part of Jennifer Landin’s biological illustration class. The turtle’s shell is made up of flat and expanded vertebrae and ribs, with shoulders and hips protected inside.

Auditory Neuroscience
Research in Christa Baker’s lab is focused on how brain circuits enable animals to understand acoustic communication signals. She studies this problem in fruit flies due to their small brains, complex communication signals and experimental tractability. The work combines animal behavior, neural recordings, connectomics, computational modeling and genetic tool-building to reveal the mechanisms underlying hearing, and how evolution shapes these mechanisms. This image, a three-dimensional rendering of fly auditory neurons, was created for the lab by Amy Sterling of FlyWire.

Paleontology
This image shows Fona herzogae, a recently discovered dinosaur that lived 99 million years ago in what is now Utah. Associate Research Professor Lindsay Zanno and Ph.D. student Haviv Avrahami, who also have affiliations with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and co-authored a paper describing the discovery, found that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life during the mid-Cretaceous period – both above and below ground.

Chemistry

Solid-state Chemistry
This image, taken by former chemistry graduate student Eric Gabilondo, calls to mind a lost city of bygone ages. It’s actually a broken piece of a centimeter-sized crystal plate belonging to a two-dimensional and layered metal oxide. In his research at NC State, Gabilondo broke open crystals to study and modify how they grow, with the end goal of creating new and improved materials. 

Crystallization Dynamics
This image captured by former chemistry postdoc Shelby Pillai (Boyd) shows a color-enhanced polarized light microscopy frame from a video of zinc chloride trihydrate freezing. By studying the crystallization rate of this ionic liquid at various temperatures, researchers can develop models of crystal nucleation and growth that are valid across a wider range of conditions than current models.

Photochemistry
This image, created by former graduate student Remi Fayad, was based on her work in chemist Phil Castellano’s research group. Fayad and others in the group used a light absorber based on earth-abundant elements confined in a micelle — a tiny particle made of substances that are soluble in water and that come together to form a ball-like shape — as well as an energy acceptor to generate a high energy photon (deep blue in the image) from two lower energy photons (cyan blue) in water. The design provided a viable route to circumvent challenges associated with photochemical upconversion in water, which could lead to new applications. Work in the Castellano group focuses on light-matter interactions. 

Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Scientific Diving
Study abroad is a big part of the NC State experience. Among the many programs available to students is a trip to the Caribbean island of Bonaire led by Sciences faculty. There, students take part in an immersive scientific diving program to explore ecological and geological change. In this image, computer science student Roman Peace cleans algae off of a tree as part of a coral reef renewal effort at one of the dive sites.

Severe Storms
How do tornadoes form? Even though severe-storm research has focused on this question for more than 50 years, much misleading information exists. Atmospheric scientist Matt Parker has been studying tornadoes for more than two decades and took this photo of a tornado while in the field. It’s an example of a tornado with the funnel cloud only in the upper half of the vortex. In this case, the surface winds were strong enough to whirl up dust and debris, which outline the lower half of the rotating column.

Volcanology
Volcanologist Arianna Soldati and two Ph.D. students traveled to Iceland in July 2023 to study an erupting volcano in the Fagradalsfjall region. It marked the third consecutive year of activity at the volcano; prior to that, there had been no eruptions in the area for more than 800 years. Soldati studies how lava moves so we can gain valuable insight into how far it will flow and how fast it will get there. This information can help us mitigate risk for the 500 million people worldwide who live near active volcanoes.

Mathematics

Topology
Mathematician Radmila Sazdanovic studies shapes, such as circles and knots, and their applications. In this image she uses knots to create a tessellation,  a coverings of a surface, often a plane or a disk as in this case, using one or more geometric shapes with no overlaps and no gaps. This image was created as part of an exhibit she created for the Immersive Scholar project that features tessellations exploring the interplay of art, nature, culture, shape, perspective and math in our everyday lives. The tessellations show symmetries of hyperbolic, negatively curved space and convey the beauty and subtlety of mathematical concepts that we encounter in our daily activities.

Data-driven Modeling and Analysis
Mohammad Farazmand works on a range of problems in applied mathematics such as dynamical systems, optimization and control. His primary focus is on understanding, predicting and mitigating extreme events in nature and engineering, such as rogue waves, extreme weather events and wildfires, that have adverse consequences. His work could lead to better prediction and mitigation approaches. This image, showing global sea surface temperatures, was generated as part of research that examined whether sensor placement and flow reconstruction using tensors, mathematical objects that can be used to describe physical properties, would be more efficient and effective at inference from sparse data.

Inverted Pendulum
Mathematician Hien Tran studies control theory, nonlinear dynamical systems and data-driven modeling of biological and physiological systems. He has applied his research to a wide variety of applications, including fluid dynamics, high energy physics, sport analytics and mathematical biology and physiology. This image shows some of his work on modeling the inverted pendulum, which has its center of mass above its pivot point and therefore falls over without additional support. The inverted pendulum is a classic problem in dynamics and control theory.

Physics

Quantum Information Science
Quantum information science is an emerging field that could change the world, and North Carolina is at the epicenter of this change. Through quantum technology, our scientists are working to solve real-world problems faster and more efficiently than may be possible with a classical computer. The IBM Quantum Innovation Center at NC State is a center of quantum computing education, research, development and implementation. Physicists in the College of Sciences are among the heaviest users of this technology. This image shows a dilution refrigerator that’s essential to achieving the super-cold temperatures necessary to conduct quantum computing research using superconducting qubits.

Nanostructured Materials
In Laura Clarke’s physics lab, researchers are striving to make affordable and highly conductive plastics. The physicists disperse highly conductive nanoparticles, called carbon nanotubes, into plastic, and then use a process called photothermal heating to manipulate conductivity and strength with lasers. Using a fluorescence microscope, the researchers observe the surface features of the plastic. This image showing a part of the process was generated by Nora Hicks, an undergraduate student in the lab.

Nuclear Astrophysics
The tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos can pass through almost anything. They also have a quantum mechanical property called “flavor” that can transform as they move through space, which makes them difficult to track. Physicist Gail McLaughlin and researchers in her lab examined a potential way to solve this challenge that involves expanding traditional methods of calculating neutrino movement to include quantum mechanical flavor change. This approach reduces the complexity of calculating how neutrinos behave in complex systems. This image, generated as part of the research, shows three-dimensional contours of quantum coherence in a neutrino moment simulation. The simulation starts with random initial conditions and develops structure in less than a nanosecond. 

Statistics

Bayesian Statistical Methods
Statistician Brian Reich uses Bayesian statistical methods to formulate linear regressions using probability distributions rather than point estimates. He applies these methods to environmental areas such as ecology, epidemiology, meteorology and climate. This image displays a new probability distribution that encourages scientifically-meaningful outcomes in an epidemiological study.

Climate Change Impacts
Statistician Emily Hector develops new methods for analyzing multiple data sources, which can help researchers answer scientific questions that could not have been addressed with a single data source. Her work includes modeling of extreme hydroclimatic events such as flooding and droughts, which helps us better understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change. This image shows her work as applied to U.S. Geological Survey maps, which are used to monitor, assess, and project changes in land use, land cover, and environmental conditions affecting humans and biological habitats.

Datathon
Datathon events, like the one organized by NC State Statistics graduate students Jimmy Hickey, Anna Wojciechowski and Shakthi Unnithan, bring together university and student-led teams from across North Carolina to leverage technology and data to develop innovative solutions for addressing complex problems. This map was generated by NC State graduate students Sam Galloway and Valliappan Muthukaruppan, whose project focused on NC State campus safety.