The National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the journal Science, today announces the 53 winners and honorable mentions of the International Science & Technology Visualization Challenge, a highly competitive contest jointly sponsored by NSF and Science. Science magazine is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

This latest competition received more than 200 entries from 18 countries, including entries from 19 U.S. states and Canadian territories. The Feb. 1, 2013, issue of Science features the winning submissions, which are also accessible to the public at NSF's website.

"It's the 10th year of this challenge, and each year, partnering with Science magazine, we receive beautiful and compelling visualizations that enhance public understanding of science," said Judith Gan, NSF's director of Legislative and Public Affairs. "Researchers are generating more information than ever before, and visualization techniques are evolving to meet the challenge of conveying this information in comprehensible ways, as well. This year's many outstanding contributions are evidence of this continuing adaptation necessary to illuminate increasingly complex information."

First Place and People's Choice for Photography: Biomineral crystals found in a sea urchin tooth. Image credit: Pupa U.P.A. Gilbert and Christopher E. Killian, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"This year's winning entries are a spectacular collection. Each one exposes a hidden facet of the natural world, or puts scientific concepts in a new light. And they use cutting-edge techniques to draw the viewer in," said Colin Norman, Science magazine's news editor. "That's exactly what we were hoping for when we joined with NSF a decade ago to launch the science and engineering visualization challenge."

Winning entries feature owls that can perform 270-degree neck rotations, biomineral crystals found in a sea urchin's tooth, a realistic video simulation of a human heart, a flash game about Special Relativity and other compelling visualizations.

A committee of staff members from Science and NSF screened the entries and sent finalists to an outside panel of experts in scientific visualization to select the winners. In addition, as was the case for the first time last year, the public participated in the voting process, selecting their favorite images as People's Choice awardees. The challenge received more than 3,150 public votes.

The winning entries are featured by category at the links below in NSF's International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge Special Report, where several winners are featured in a video produced by NSF.

The 2012 winning entries are included in five categories:

PHOTOGRAPHY

First Place & People's Choice:

Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert and Christopher E. Killian--University of Wisconsin-Madison
Biomineral Single Crystals

Honorable Mentions (2-way tie):

Kai-hung Fung--Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital (Hong Kong)
Self Defense

Viktor Sykora--Charles University (Czech Republic)
Jan Zemlicka, Frantisek Krejci and Jan Jakubek--Czech Technical University (Czech Republic)
X-ray micro-radiography and microscopy of seeds

ILLUSTRATION

First Place:

Emmett McQuinn, Pallab Datta, Myron D. Flickner, William P. Risk and Dharmendra S. Modha--IBM Research-Almaden (San Jose, Calif.)
Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain

Honorable Mention and People's Choice:

Maxime Chamberland, David Fortin and Maxime Descoteaux--Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab (Quebec, Canada)
Cerebral Infiltration

POSTERS & GRAPHICS

First Place:

Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Michael Habib, Tim Phelps, Lydia Gregg and Philippe Gailloud--Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, Md.)
Adaptations of the Owl's Cervical & Cephalic Arteries in Relation to Extreme Neck Rotation

Honorable Mention:

Mark Nielsen and Satoshi Amagai--Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Chevy Chase, Md.)
Bill Pietsch and Davey Thomas--Astronaut 3 Media Group (Arlington, Va.)
Andy Knoll--Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)
Earth Evolution: The Intersection of Geology and Biology

People's Choice:

Will Stahl-Timmins, Clare Redshaw, Mathew White, Michael Depledge and Lora Fleming--University of Exeter Medical School (England, U.K.)
The Pharma Transport Town: Understanding the Routes to Sustainable Pharmaceutical Use

GAMES & APPS

Honorable Mention:

Debbie Denise Reese, Robert E. Kosko, Charles A. Wood and Cassie Lightfritz--Wheeling Jesuit University (Wheeling, W.Va.) Barbara G. Tabachnick--California State University, Northridge
CyGaMEs Selene II: A Lunar Construction GaME

Honorable Mention:

Andy Hall--TestTubeGames (Cambridge, Mass.)
Velocity Raptor

People's Choice:

Gayatri Mehta--University of North Texas (Denton, Texas)
UNTANGLED

VIDEO

First Place & People's Choice:

Guillermo Marin, Fernando M. Cucchietti, Mariano Vazquez and Carlos Tripiana--Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Barcelona, Spain)
Alya Red: A Computational Heart

Honorable Mentions (3-way tie):

Christine E. Farrar, Zac H. Forsman, Ruth D. Gates, Jo-Ann C. Leong and Robert J. Toonen--University of Hawaii, Manoa
Observing the Coral Symbiome Using Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy

Thomas Brown--Nucleus Medical Media (Kennesaw, Ga.)
Fertilization

Michael Rubinstein, Neal Wadhwa, Frédo Durand, William T. Freeman, Hao-Yu Wu and John Guttag--MIT (Cambridge, Mass.)
Revealing Invisible Changes In The World