2013 Insight Awards Winners Announced; Andor Helps Researchers Show the Artistic Side of Science

Andor Technology plc (Andor), a world leader in scientific imaging and spectroscopy solutions, today announced that three visually stunning and scientifically captivating entries have won their categories in the Andor Insight Awards Scientific Imaging Competition. Stephen DeCamp of Brandeis University topped the Physical Sciences category; Fernando Amat of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute came top in the Life Sciences category; and Jamie Kasuboski of The Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center Core at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies won in the Imaris category.

Stephen DeCamp’s entry is entitled ‘Oscillating Microtubule Bundles’ and investigates the material properties of mixtures of microtubules, a depletion agent and the molecular motor Kinesin. Acquired using an Andor Clara CCD camera, the short movie shows a method that will allow scientists to study systems of self-propelled and self-organized matter that exist in the field known as Active Matter.

Fernando Amat entered a video entitled ‘Global nuclei tracking in the Drosophila syncytial blastoderm’, which captures part of the mitotic cycle in a Drosophila embryo. This technique allows rendering and tracking of cell components with an efficiency of over 95%. It was captured using a multi-view light-sheet microscope equipped with two Andor Neo sCMOS cameras.

Jamie Kasuboski’s entry entitled ‘Whole Mouse Brain 3D Reconstruction’ shows, in incredible detail, an Imaris 3D reconstruction of a mouse brain including proteins and neuron structure. Later analysis counted which regions of the brain contained specific cell types, therefore giving a powerful insight in to the wiring of the brain.

The winners were selected from a panel of expert judges from both life and physical sciences that included: Dr. Bob Marshall of Stanford University, Dr. Satoshi Nishimura of the University of Tokyo, Dr. Gábor Csúcs of the Institute for Biochemistry in Zürich and Dr. Donal Denvir from Andor Technology.

The Insight Awards focus on recognising the cutting edge work carried out by researchers using Andor equipment or Bitplane software in the fields of Physical and Life Sciences Imaging. This year’s entries utilised the full spectrum of Andor and Bitplane products including spectrographs, EMCCD and sCMOS cameras, Confocal Microscopy Systems and Imaris® software.

"The visual impact and scientific value of this year’s entries clearly highlights the cutting edge work being carried out by researchers using our products" said Dr. Andrew Dennis, Director of Product Management. "The judge’s selection of winners provides an interesting insight into the significance and detail of the researcher’s work across multiple scientific disciplines."