Behind every data set, field note, and experiment lies a story of curiosity, creativity and persistence. The University of Utah celebrated those stories through the Image of Research, a new campus-wide competition and exhibition inviting faculty, research staff, and graduate students to showcase the distinct and aesthetic dimensions of their scholarly work.

1st place: Searching for Life in America’s Dead Sea
People’s Choice Award winner  

Author: Michael Werner, faculty, School of Biological Sciences

This image was captured during a field work trip to Great Salt Lake (GSL). We had just finished paddling in kayaks from Antelope Island to Fremont Island, which takes about 2-3 hours. As I was resting, my graduate student (Shelley Reich, left) and post-doc (Julie Jung, right) began collecting submerged sediment to bring back to the lab. I couldn’t help but notice the profile of the two scientists in the foreground framed by the mountains, which seemed to emerge almost from nowhere above the placid conditions of the lake that day. This turned out to be a pivotal sampling trip from which we discovered a new species of roundworm (nematode), representing the third animal to live in the hypersaline bays of GSL.