Waller’s lobster photo a finalist in Vizzies
University of Maine graduate student Jesica Waller’s photograph of a 3-week-old American lobster is a finalist in the National Science Foundation’s Visualization Challenge, or Vizzies.
The contest recognizes the most beautiful visualizations from the worlds of science and engineering. The People’s Choice winner is determined by public vote. Voting ends Tuesday evening and the winner will receive $500.
Waller took the image with a camera mounted on a dissecting microscope.
“Every day I randomly select larvae from my experiment to photograph,” says Waller, who is earning her master’s degree in marine biology at the Darling Marine Center. “This picture shows the complexity of the larval body plan and highlights some of their distinct features, like their feathery tail and sensitive hairs on their legs.”
Waller earned the 2015–2016 Canadian-American Center Fellowship from the UMaine Canadian-American Center for her research on how lobster larvae will respond to climate change and ocean acidification on the developmental and genetic levels. She was recently interviewed for an Al Jazeera English television piece about ocean acidification and lobsters.
“Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man to Rosalind Franklin’s X-rays, science visualization has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is to enlighten,” reads the description of the challenge on the NSF website.
Contact: Beth Staples, 207.581.3777