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 2025 Image of Research competition to ask them more about their process. Enjoy this interview with Yun Seong Kim, a graduate student in Mechanical Science and Engineering and 2nd place winner in this year’s contest, and then view the video to hear Kim read his award-winning submission, "Helix of Growth."
Why did you enter Image of Research this year?
A short answer is: I wanted to advertise our research to the public with a beautiful image. Image of Research competition was the best chance to do so. I hope many aspects combined in the image, such as inspiration from nature, chemistry, and manufacturing, were delivered well to the public with compelling image and description.
What was the process of coming up with your image?
During the revision process of the ‘Morphogenic Growth 3D Printing’ paper, we were asked to demonstrate the capabilities on fabricating more complex shapes. This was one of the hard-to-make shapes for which that the team had to come up with new formulation of the resin. I thought the shape is either a helical horn or a helical sprout. Tanver, my friend and co-author of the work, suggested to put gravels on the base to make the image clear that the shape is a sprout. Through the process, I believe we were able to make an image that was intuitive and beautiful.
What did you learn or take away from this experience?
I think I learned how to communicate science to the public better: Try to be as simple as you can so that people are not confused, and sometimes an image can explain more than your words. Also, this work was done as a team. Students and PIs from many disciplines put their knowledge and effort together to make the shape and image it. I learned that I can achieve more as a group than by myself.
Read Yun Seong's Entry
Emerging from the earthy foundation, the twisting helix in this image represents our research journey from potential to realization. Fabricated via ‘growth printing’, a novel additive manufacturing process we developed, the helix mimics the principles of natural growth seen in plants and organisms – where chemical reactions interact with the environment to drive development. Utilizing chemistry that converts liquid resin to solid plastic, we ‘grew’ this helix into its shape using a motion stage. This sprouting helix showcases the potential of merging nature’s wisdom with scientific innovation, opening a doorway to a more sustainable future for manufacturing. For those interested in the technical aspects of materials science: the growth printing is driven by frontal ring-opening metathesis polymerization (FROMP) chemistry, carefully coordinated with printer motion and heat transfer. The self-sustaining exothermic FROMP reaction cures a resin mixture of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) and polybutadiene (PBD) into a thermoset polymer at a curing at speed approximately 1 mm/s. This process does not require any continuous input of energy to the system to sustain the chemical reaction, making growth printing remarkably energy-efficient and faster compared to conventional additive manufacturing methods.
Visit the Image of Research website for more information about this celebration of graduate student research.
This interview was conducted by Brandon Stauffer, Videographer here at the Graduate College. Brandon came to the Graduate College with a background in journalism and is now working to showcase the impact of Higher Education at Illinois.
