News - Unite! Doctoral Network in Energy Storage
Art in Energy Science Competition: These are the winners
How can energy research be made visible? The Art in Energy Science competition organised by Unite!Energy explored this question by inviting researchers to share the aesthetic and visual side of their work through scientific photography. The jury has now selected the three winning entries.
Many inspiring and creative photographs were submitted. The wide range of images demonstrated how diverse and visually compelling energy research can be. Unite!Energy thanks all participants for their contributions.
The three winning images (from left): “First Contact: Hydrogen Meets Rock”, "Cornish Sun Eye", “Light from within”.
First place: Hydrogen meets rock
First prize goes to Ali Toorajipour, PhD student in the Aquatic Geochemistry Group at TU Darmstadt, for his image “First Contact: Hydrogen Meets Rock”.
The photograph shows hydrogen bubbles emerging from a fine needle and rising through degassed water until they meet a rock surface. It makes pore-scale gas–water–rock interactions visible – processes that underpin subsurface technologies such as geological hydrogen storage and reactive transport in porous media.
Runner-up: A window into geothermal systems
Second place was awarded to AyÅŸegül Turan, PhD student in Geothermal Science and Technology at TU Darmstadt, for her image “Cornish Sun Eye”.
The photograph centres on a granitic block collected from the Chywoon Quarry in Cornwall. From this block, 20 core samples were extracted to analyse the petrophysical, petrographical and geochemical properties of Cornish granite. The image highlights the practical and analytical dimensions of geothermal research.
Third place: Light from within
Third place goes to Ayushya Rao, Master’s student in Information and Computer Engineering at TU Graz, for “Light from within”.
The image captures bioluminescence in action. Oxygen reacts with luciferin in the presence of luciferase enzymes and produces highly efficient “cold light” with almost no heat generation. The photograph draws attention to fundamental processes of energy conversion in biological systems.