Enter your amazing science visuals in the 2025 Cool Science Image Contest
A “winterover” — one of the two staff members who stay through the minus-100-degree Fahrenheit nights of Antarctica’s coldest months — hikes underneath the stars and aurora to the South Pole home of IceCube, a UW–Madison-led neutrino telescope, in the 2021 Cool Science Image Contest winning photo. Yuya Makino
Science often goes where human eyes cannot follow. Moments too fleeting to observe in real time and objects too distant, tiny or chaotic for easy observation with our limited senses can still reveal structures and interactions key to understanding the world around us, sparking inspiration or flat-out awe.
That’s where cool science images come in.
To celebrate the exploratory and aesthetic value of the photos, renderings, videos, images, art and more made in the process of fulfilling curiosity and advancing science, the 15th annual Cool Science Image Contest is now soliciting the best visuals from members of the University of Wisconsin–Madison community.
Over the years, hundreds of images and videos depicting animals, insects, plants, cells, stars, weather, nanoscale structures and more have been entered in the contest, which is sponsored by Madison-based Promega Corp. Any visual media produced during the course of research, scholarship or self-guided discovery are welcome. Winners typically include 10 still images and two videos. The best are showcased in a fall exhibit at the Mandelbaum and Albert Family Vision Gallery of the McPherson Eye Research Institute and for a year at Promega’s headquarters.
Previous winners include distinguished scientists whose submissions have gone on to be recognized in major international image contests, but every year’s honorees include relative novices who have captured something amazing.
All qualified submissions are featured on university websites and in other UW–Madison communications, and in science outreach and art exhibits on and off campus.
To enter as many as three of your cool science images or videos, visit the contest website for guidelines, submission requirements and a link to the entry form. The submission deadline is May 31.
