Every year, creative grad students from across the disciplines submit compelling images of their research and scholarship to the Image of Research competition. To accompany each image submission, the creator writes a short paragraph explaining how the image relates to their wider academic work, giving us a glimpse behind the scenes.
We caught up with some of the award winners from the 2026 Image of Research competition to ask them more about their process. Enjoy this interview with Kevin Huang, a graduate student in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Second Place winner in this year’s contest, and then view the video to hear Huang read his award-winning submission, "Synthetic Symbiosis: A Cruelty-Free Future".
Why did you enter Image of Research this year?
I decided to participate in the Image of Research competition because of the profound need to visualize academic efforts. A picture truly is worth a thousand words. In this era of information overload and rapid consumption, rigorous and meticulous academic research, while still vital, can sometimes feel slow-paced. However, science communicators have successfully transformed complex studies into captivating short videos that capture the public’s imagination. As a researcher, I wanted to distill my own research and story into a single multimedia piece, broadcasting it to a wider audience and showcasing the vibrant spirit of today's scholars.
What was the process of coming up with your image?
It started with a fundamental question: Can we visualize the value of life? While many Pulitzer Prize winners capture this by freezing breathtaking moments of the physical world, I chose to simulate it within the "silicon world." In my imagination, the simplest way to honor an object is to hold it in the palm of your hand and offer it to the world. From there, the creative path was clear: I wanted to place the biological models we simulate in our research directly into a human palm, presenting the beauty of life's complexity to a global audience.
