The art in science of MicroTAS: 10 years of miniaturized art

The 2017 MicroTAS conference witnessed the 10th anniversary of the Art in Science competition. The 21st International Conference of Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (MicroTAS 2017) was held in Savannah, GA (USA) from October 22 to 27, 2017. The Art in Science competition is sponsored by Lab on a Chip and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This year 20 participants joined in to make this competition a memorable one, and a difficult one for the judges, with many excellent and creative images. This year's Art in Science competition winner was Maria Cristina Letizia (Fig. 1) from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland with the image titled “Give bubbles a chance” (Fig. 2). This image shows, as described by the artist, “bubbles are fed up of being considered as THE nightmare of microfluidic people and are here posing to show all their beauty to those who are not used to seeing it.” This image was obtained during the filling of microfluidic chambers with Pluronic F-127 with the purpose of functionalizing the chip. The pluronic surfactant created bubbles that were captured with EPFL's “5×-beauty-immersion objective” and a “digital-rainbow camera”.¹ The judges of this year's competition were Maria Southall from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Lab on a Chip Associate Editor Petra Dittrich from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, and Darwin R. Reyes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA.

Fig. 1 Art in Science award ceremony image taken during the 2017 MicroTAS conference. Maria Cristina Letizia (center) from EPFL, Switzerland, was the winner of the 2017 MicroTAS Art in Science competition. She received the award certificate from Maria Southall (right) from Lab on a Chip and Darwin Reyes (left) from NIST.

Fig. 2 Image winner of the 2017 MicroTAS Art in Science competition titled Give Bubbles a Chance. This image was submitted to the competition by Maria Cristina Letizia from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.

The criteria established for this year's selection was consensus between the judges of which were the top three images based on their visual appeal, scientific merit, originality and suitability for becoming the front cover of a Lab on a Chip issue. After choosing the three top images the winner was also decided by consensus. The two runners-up of the 2017 MicroTAS Art in Science competition were:

1st runner up – Reflections by Dorothea Helmer of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Reflections was the 1st runner up and was the creation of Dorothea Helmer of KIT, Germany. This image shows two spiral channels that were directly printed into PDMS using suspended liquid subtractive lithography and later filled with aqueous dye solutions.

2nd runner up – Mondrian's Micropillars by Eloise Pariset of CEA-LETI, France (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 This image is titled Mondrian's Micropillars and was the 2nd runner up. The image was submitted by Eloise Pariset from CEA-LETI, France. This beautiful image shows a scanning electron micrograph of silicon-based micropillars as well as microchannels. These microfluidic systems were designed for size-based separations of microparticles in solution by a deterministic lateral displacement (DLD). The different shapes are used to improve the separation efficiency of target microparticles.

Since the inception of the Art in Science competition at the MicroTAS conference in 2008 there has been an overwhelming interest in this community to showcase excellent examples of microfluidic-inspired art in the form of amazingly stunning images. To honor the first 10 years of the MicroTAS Art in Science competition we present here the first 9 images that won the competition from 2008 to 2016 (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5 MicroTAS Art in Science competition winners from 2008 to 2016. (a) DOI: 10.1039/B821774M, (b) DOI: 10.1039/C002965N, (c) DOI: 10.1039/C1LC90007B, (d) DOI: 10.1039/C2LC90034C, (e) DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90026F, (f) DOI: 10.1039/C4LC90017K, (g) DOI: 10.1039/C5LC90049B, (h) DOI: 10.1039/C6LC90029A, (i) DOI: 10.1039/C7LC90030A.

Acknowledgements

The Art in Science competition is sponsored and supported by MicroTAS, the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS), the Lab on a Chip journal, and NIST. The 2017 award consisted of a monetary prize ($2,500), an award certificate, and a coveted front cover of the Lab on a Chip journal. Please, check the MicroTAS 2018 conference website for further details regarding the slight changes to the competition format and image submission deadline for the next MicroTAS Conference in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

References

1. M. C. Letizia, M. Cornaglia, R. Trouillon and M. A. M. Gijs, Single-Animal-Based Drug Testug and High-Content Screening is Enabled on C. Elegans by an Automated Microfluidic Platform, MicroTAS 2017, pp. 1092–1093.

Footnote

† Any opinions or views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author and do not represent the views of the journal, Lab on a Chip, or the Royal Society of Chemistry.

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