Science as Art

As a special feature of MRS meetings, we offer the popular Science as Art competitions with entry open to all registered meeting attendees.

Visualization methods provide an important tool in materials science for the analysis and presentation of scientific work. Images can often convey information in a way that tables of data or equations cannot match. Occasionally, scientific images transcend their role as a medium for transmitting information and contain the aesthetic qualities that transform them into objects of beauty and art.

The galleries below represent some of the best entries from past meetings. Copyright for these images belongs to the Materials Research Society. To request permission to reuse the images, please contact us here.

2024 MRS Fall Science as Art Competition

The Science as Art Competition is open to all registered 2024 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit attendees. Finalists' entries will be on display in the Hynes Convention Center. Multiple first-place and second-place awards of $400 and $200, respectively, will be presented to the winning entries at the meeting.

Enter Now

Deadline: October 25, 2024, 11:59 pm ET

Competition Rules

You must be a registered attendee of the 2024 MRS Fall Meeting and be onsite at the meeting to participate. You cannot designate another person to show your artwork for you.
Submissions are limited to one image per contestant and should complement the "science" component of the meeting. Multiple submissions by a single contestant will be disqualified.
The use of copyright images for submissions is strictly prohibited.
Images may be obtained by any material imaging technique. They can also be the result of modeling and simulation, or can be obtained by combining multiple images into one artistic image. Because the focus is on art, the aesthetic rather than scientific quality of the image is the key element in the competition. Nevertheless, the images must have some connection to materials science.
All images are to be submitted online at http://mrs.org/science-as-art as a high resolution .jpg file of at least 300 dpi (10MB maximum size) on or before 11:59 pm (ET) on October 25, 2024.

Please include the submitter's last name in the title of the .jpg file.
The Meeting Chairs will select a group of finalists from these submissions and will notify all entrants of their status by November 1. Finalists will then bring their entries to the Fall meeting ready for judging and general display.

Format: All submitted images must include a short description of the technique used, the object that was imaged and any special conditions. If selected as a finalist, the image and caption should be made ready for mounting at the meeting. Detailed printing and mounting details will be sent to the finalists once selected.
Judging: The meeting attendees will independently determine first and second place selections via the MRS app. First-place Science as Art works will be awarded $400 prizes by the Chairs at the meeting. Second-place prizes of $200 each will also be awarded. Each entry is eligible for only one prize.

Please contact [email protected] with any questions regarding your submission.