With her microscopic image of a spider’s spinnerets, silk-spinning organs, Tricia Meredith, Ph.D., assistant research professor in the College of Education, earned first place in this year’s 2020 Art of Science photography contest, hosted by FAU’s Division of Research. Thirteen judges from across the university chose Meredith’s winning photograph from more than 150 submissions.
This is the second year of the successful contest, which aims to highlight the cutting-edge research across all colleges, while engaging and educating others in all the unique research, scholarship and creative activity taking place in the field, in the lab and across all disciplines at FAU.
Behind this year’s top winning photograph is a partnership with the Karen Slattery Educational Research Center onsite day care, according to Meredith, also the director of research and principle investigator for FAU’s onsite imaging lab.
“The lab is meant to be a collaborative research hub in exchange of mentorship for the students,” Meredith said. With a sample from the voluntary prekindergarten class garden, the imaging lab technicians scanned the spider so the class could discover that there is more to the harmless spiny orb-weaver spider than just the scary exterior. ◆