The award recognizes the best in light microscopy imaging worldwide

Olympus is proud to announce the winners of its first Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award, a competition that recognizes the best in life science imaging worldwide.

Ainara Pintor from Spain was selected as the global winner for her vibrant image of an immunostained mouse brain slice with two fluorophores. She named her winning image “Neurogarden” because it reflects the brain’s complexity.

“There are over 70 million neurons in a mouse brain,” Pintor explained. “This is an example of what we can observe in the hippocampus of a single brain slice, in this case, taken from Thy1 transgenic mice.”

Pintor is thrilled to win Olympus’ first Global Image of the Year Award. “It’s a fantastic feeling that this image will cross borders and be seen all over the world!” said Pintor. For the grand prize, Pintor will choose an Olympus CX43 microscope with a DP27 digital camera or Olympus’ newly launched X Line™ objectives.

In addition to the global award, three regional prizes were awarded to Howard Vindin (Australia) for Asia, Tagide deCarvalho (United States) for the Americas, and Alan Prescott (UK) for EMEA. Each regional winner will receive an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II digital camera. Honorable mentions include Ming-Der Lin, Nat Prunet, Justin Zoll, Tong Zhang, Daniela Malide, Hamed Rajabi, Rudolf Buechi, Martin Hailstone, and Nathan Renfro. All entries were evaluated on artistic and visual aspects, scientific impact, and microscope proficiency.

The contest launched on August 1, 2019 with a call for users to submit their life science microscopy images through January 31, 2020. Olympus received over 400 submissions from 65 countries.

Satoshi Nakamura, Vice President, Scientific Solutions Global Marketing, Olympus Corporation, was thrilled with the quality and diversity of images submitted this year.

“I’m so impressed by the amazing response to our first Global Image of the Year Award,” said Nakamura. “The creative image submissions embody our contest’s mission of celebrating art in science. We hope this competition continues to inspire people to find beauty in an unexpected place—right under their microscope.” 

About the Image of the Year (IOTY) Award

Olympus’ IOTY Award began in 2017 as the Image of the Year European Life Science Light Microscopy Award with the aim to celebrate both the artistic and scientific value of microscopy images. Today, the competition stays true to this mission by encouraging people across the world to look at scientific images in a new way, appreciate their beauty, and share images with others.

learn more about the Award

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