1st Place - aman agah, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The rationale for creating a tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ (prayer beads) and displaying it within an Iranian box laid upon an Iranian textile relates directly to my dissertation project titled “diasporanian memories: a feminist collage of zekr/ﺮﮐذ” which is a diasporanian (diaspora + Iranian) memoir utilizing memory alongside explorations of subject formation via sensual religious and spiritual practices discerning my paths to feminisms. A central component of my dissertation project involves an exploration of Iranian-Shi’a rituals and practices as foundational to my feminist identity.

A tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ serves as a physical connection to zekr/ﺮﮐذ (remembrance). Zekr/ﺮﮐذ is a spiritual act of remembrance. The beads on a tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ are divided into three segments, separated by a bead of different texture or size, and each segment contains 33 beads. The prayers I first learned to recite on tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ are referred to as ‘Tasbeeh of Fatima’–Fatima (pbuh) who was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh), was taught these specific prayers by her father and became the namesake of the zekr/ﺮﮐذ–and consists of 33 repetitions of ‘subhāna -llah’ (‘glorified is Allah’), 33 repetitions of ‘al-hamdu lillāh’ (‘praise be to Allah’), and 34 repetitions of ‘allāhu ’akbar’ (‘Allah is great’). The beads are held in the right hand, serving as counters passing between the fingers as the prayers are chanted, so that this act of zekr/ﺮﮐذ (remembrance) with the tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ becomes a space and place for devotion, a literal embodiment of remembrance. With this visual bibliography, I engage in zekr/ﺮﮐذ of citations, an active engagement with body and mind, an act of naming again and again the people, knowledges, and feminisms which have come before me and shaped me.  

I think of citations as points of engaging with memory, remembrance, and witnessing. Zekr/ﺮﮐذ is a form of remembering and reconnecting–with my family, with my community, my culture, my sense of belonging, and the feminisms that have always been present in my life. Through the act of zekr/ﺮﮐذ I am able to hold my citations closeby and engage with them continually. Across the light beads I have written the surnames of my references listed in the bibliography. Across the dark beads, I have names (citations) written (some in Farsi) in silver and gold. The silver are family/ancestral names and the gold are spiritual/ancestral names. Because my dissertation project includes Farsi and engages with personal, familial, cultural, and spiritual knowledges, it felt important to include these names in my visual bibliography. I then drew Islamic and Iranian inspired motifs on the remaining beads. I think of this tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ as a way to connect spiritual rituals with feminist citation practices, to hold my citations in hand, and to explore remembrance as a feminist act and the sensory, tactile, and embodied memories that connect me to my own sense of belonging within feminisms, and as a feminist. I chose to display the tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ in this small wooden box and on top of this particular tablecloth because they hold cultural significance for me–both are objects from Iran, and objects that were gifted to me by my parents. Placing the tasbeeh/ﺢﯿﺒﺴﺗ as such further emphasizes the deep connection to and presence of my cultural and ancestral citations.  

2nd Place - Luke Stuntz, Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences

I have spent the last three years working on thesis research related to the foraging ecology of river otters in coastal environments, with a specific focus on the predation of nesting seabirds. This is a multi-taxa project that takes a next-generation natural history approach; I have used a broad diversity of methods to generate holistic insight into the behavior of these charismatic and elusive carnivores. As I have drafted my manuscripts for publication, I have become acutely aware of just how my research rests upon a wide and interconnected network of knowledge. There are hundreds of scientists who have been in implicit conversation with one another for the past several decades, and their work builds direct links between seemingly very disparate research.

One element of my research involves population genetics and explores relatedness within large social networks of wild river otters. As part of this process, I built a number of network diagrams showing connectivity within this population – and it occurred to me that my bibliography of interconnected research papers could be represented similarly. Through citations, these papers are connected to one another – each additional year of scholastic publication results in new additions this “research web”. I envisioned each paper in my bibliography as a node within a network, with each citation of another paper constituting a node. By creating an animation of the expansion of this network over 45 years, I hoped to convey a unique abstract representation of the acceleration in knowledge-building that has characterized the world of ecological research.

My animation starts slowly, with just a few disconnected papers popping up each year. More papers begin to emerge, and connections between the nodes start to build up. Suddenly, the pace of progress is almost too fast to consciously take in and the web of interconnected research forms a single cohesive shape. The colors of each node represent their academic focus (as determined via a three-dimensional PCA of word frequencies within each paper, mapped to RGB values), and we can see that while certain areas of expertise cluster together, they are all ultimately linked within this knowledge network. Titles of these papers circle the expanding network at a rapid pace – it’s possible to read a few words from each of these titles, but the speed at which they disappear conveys the velocity with which new scientific ideas proliferate and fade. Ultimately, we’re left with a beautiful, surprisingly organic fractal-like shape – the titles drift away and I can see the full shape of the network which I hope to join.

3rd Place - Gabby John

My thesis research involves identifying the extent to which mature Douglas-fir and western hemlock trees in Oregon have been affected by heat waves, namely the 2021 Heat Dome. I do this by analyzing tree growth in the short term (via sensors called dendrometers) and long term (via tree rings). While no quest for knowledge is ever complete, I have secured a robust collection of relevant research papers in forest ecology throughout my program. I tend to view ecology as an art form in addition to a science. As a lifelong musician, I love recognizing the “songs” of animals and rustling leaves; I am also a freelance photographer with experience in nature photography. To me, merging art and science is important for creatively communicating science in a way for anyone to understand.

For this present competition, I am communicating my research via symbolic tree cookies. Smooth slabs of a tree stem’s cross-section are often called tree cookies. These provide a medium for dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings. The size, shape, and color of each ring provide insights into that tree’s life: age, fire events, water stress, injury, and more. In the way that each annual growth ring of a tree tells a story about that individual’s life history, I wanted my sources to tell a story about the types of literature I have been studying for my thesis. Therefore, my submission consists of six tree cookies dedicated to six individual literature topics wherein each ring is a citation, the oldest of which being in the center.

After realizing that a tree cookie with 20 citation rings would not be legible, I looked through my bibliography for keywords that could help me categorize the literature. I appreciate Zotero’s color-coding option for this purpose. From that, I settled on six cookie categories, each of which contains six references chronologically sorted for a total of 36 displayed references. Each graphic is titled “dendrochronology of [topic]” to symbolize my use of tree ring analysis. A brief explanation for each category is as follows: 1) Dendrochronology of stem science; dendrometers measure changes in stem size throughout a day, so many papers I cite are specifically about tree stems. 2) Dendrochronology of heat waves / 2021 Heat Dome; contextualizing tree growth relative to the heat crisis of 2021 is the focal point of my research, popularizing this topic within my bibliography. 3) Dendrochronology of the Pacific Northwest; patterns of climate, forest species composition, and tree growth behaviors vary widely by geography. My research is in the Pacific Northwest. 4) Dendrochronology of tree technology; the majority of my work is online as I download data files from dendrometers and analyze them in R. This requires access to and knowledge of technological datasets, programs, and the dendrometers that provide the data. 5) Dendrochronology of tree stress & mortality; the primary justification of my research is that climate change is leading to a tree health pandemic. My bibliography is consequently replete with papers discussing instances and causes of stressed or dead trees, especially during heat waves and drought. 6) Dendrochronology of carbon uptake & sequestration; one of the key benefits of trees is their ability to store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Citing research on this further justifies why researching trees is important.

Entry by Angelika Kurthen, Integrative Biology

My PhD research focuses on using stage structured population models to investigate how aquatic invertebrate abundance and standing-stock biomass respond to different environmental stressors. I’ve developed five taxon-specific stage-structured models and a multi-species population model for aquatic invertebrates in the tailwaters of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. To create these models, I had to search the literature for descriptions of taxon-specific fecundities, life spans, survival under non-stressor conditions, responses to floods and dam management decisions, and responses to water temperature. These vital rates were used as the foundation for my models, and several studies are included in each model parameterization. I’ve chosen to represent a net spinning caddisfly, a freshwater amphipod, and a mayfly in my visualization, just three of the taxa for which I created models. In each collage, the literature used to parameterize each taxon is cut and pasted in the silhouette of the organism. Most of my data that I use in the validation and simulation is from the U.S. Geological Survey, so I also chose to include these organisms on a U.S.G.S. topological map of Glen Canyon Dam and it’s tailwaters. The simulations I run are river dependent, with stressors, like increased temperatures and flow alteration scaled to match potential impacts of the Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River. I highlight this dependency by inking the Colorado River in blue and tracing it with literature related to environmental variables and the focal organism. Although small and often overlooked, aquatic invertebrate populations are the food base for the Colorado River ecosystem, and incredibly ecologically relevant. As climate change and management decisions continue to alter the physical environment, biological communities, like aquatic invertebrates, will be affected, likely in ways that we have not seen before.

Entry by Richard Lumata, Nutrition

One of the research projects I have been working on is utilizing different pasteurized human milk samples and test milk’s bioactivity under preterm infant’s gastrointestinal phase/condition. One of those pasteurization methods is Ultraviolet C irradiation. Ultraviolet C is a type of low energy type of radiation which has been known to have an effective germicidal effect. To better explain my idea about this project, I decided to come up with a painting with an incorporation of some recyclable and waste materials (eggshells, carton boards, pistachio shells, and some plant/tree waste that can be found at our OSU campus). The painting overall highlights the human milk which is at the center of the art piece sitting on a nutrition book with a surrounding that looks like a fantasy, magical theme. It also represents OSU’s nature-inspired campus. I did this as I consider human milk that works like magic to aid in infants’ growth and development. There is no other food source that can match the wonders of nutritional components of human milk, especially for babies at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The said nutrients include immunoglobulins, antibacterial and antiviral proteins and peptide, vitamins, and a myriad of both micro and macronutrients. I incorporated eggshell in human milk not only because it gives texture to the white color of the milk but also just like milk, egg shell is also high in calcium. The eggshell helps to emphasize the UV C lamp as well.

Funny thing, I found these dried fruits on the ground from trees that seem to be omnipresent here in the Corvallis area. The fruit looks like the shape of a corona virus (having the so-called spike proteins), and I decided to paint them with different colors representing pathogens that can be found in milk and can successfully be pasteurized by UV-C (figure on the middle left).  Moreover, I also added some plant waste I got from OSU campus (dried moss and a conifer flower) and make them look like grass and trees that are also giving emphasis to nature-inspired background. Lastly, while I was doing this painting, I was eating my favorite snack, pistachio, and I decided to use the shells as a frame to finish off my painting. Overall, this painting represents the benefits of utilizing ultraviolet C radiation not only to achieve the required microbial reduction set by the FDA but also to preserve the bioactive components (shown in the cardboard graphs) essential for the proper growth and development of infants, especially those in the NICU. As a nature lover and someone who loves art, I value the importance of sustainable resources and include these values in my simple painting to come up with my overall idea about what I am doing in my graduate program at the Dallas Lab, College of Health.