8/20/2024 Beckman Institute
Written by Beckman Institute
MechSE undergraduate Diana Pham was one of seven winners of this year’s annual Beckman Institute Research Image Contest.
The contest is open to researchers affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology as well as non-Beckman researchers on campus who use the institute’s core facilities. This year's winners include undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty members. Pham won the undergraduate student category.
Her image was titled “Visualizing the unseen.” In it, metal nanoparticles magnified to 100 times their original size appear as floating pentagons due to the angled, intensely focused light on the pointed upper edges of the metal grid lines. Because the nanoparticles are too small for optical microscopes, which magnify objects with visible light, researchers turn to transmission electron microscopes, which magnify objects with fast-moving electrons.
At Beckman, Pham works with chemistry professor and former Beckman Institute Interim Director Cathy Murphy; postdoctoral researcher Kelly Powderly; and Joe Maduzia, a research engineer in the Micro-Nano-Mechanical Systems Laboratory (the cleanroom in Lu MEB). Her image was captured with a 100-times-magnification microscope in the cleanroom.
“The research represented by this image will help researchers interested in analyzing gold, silver and copper nanoparticles. This could help people with climate change applications to further understand how nanoparticles are distributed and modified in complex biological systems,” Pham said.
A team of Beckman administrators, staff and faculty members blind-judged the entries on their visual and research appeal. The winning images will be displayed for one year in the Beckman Institute East Atrium and one year in the Beckman Director's Conference Room before finding permanent homes across the institute and in the community.
“I’m very pleased that so many of our researchers found so much beauty in their work and wanted to share it,” said Murphy. “We had a tough time picking the winners. Congratulations to all!”