Image Competition

The intent of the competition is to highlight and recognise the creativity of our members and provide a series of images communicating the value and beauty of AWTRS research to the wider community.

We invite the submission of quality images that inspire and reflect the work carried out by members of our society. We welcome entries from all disciplines related to wound healing and tissue repair. The images should entice and captivate the viewers’ attention, raising awareness and intrigue about the research. The award has 3 categories:

  • PhD
  • ECR
  • Open

Terms and Conditions

  • Applicant must be a current financial member of AWTRS.
  • Use of this image by AWTRS will not infringe copyright and/or intellectual property rights of a third party.
  • If the entry depicts Aboriginal knowledges, every effort has been made to ensure protection of Aboriginal Peoples rights to traditional knowledges.
  • Applicants for the PhD category must be a current student (PhD, Masters, Honours) at the time of submission.
  • Applicants for the ECR category must be within 7 years of their PhD conferral (taking into account career disruption) at the time of submission.
  • Applicants for the Open category must be more than 7 years post PhD conferral (taking into account career disruption) at the time of submission.
  • AWTRS reserves the right to use a recipient of the AWTRS image award for promotion of AWTRS events (i.e., AWTRS scientific meeting website or flyer).
  • A subcommittee of the AWTRS committee (minimum 3 people) will review the submission and select a recipient for each category.
  • The decision of the subcommittee of the AWTRS committee is final.
  • Each image can only be considered for one (1) award category.
  • Images can only receive one (1) AWTRS image award.
  • Applications submitted by June 27 each calendar year will be considered for the first image award of that year and applications submitted between June 27 and December 15 will be considered for the second image award of that year.

Prize

The prize for this competition is a feature in the AWTRS biannual newsletter, as well as being listed as the “Featured image” on the AWTRS website and all affiliated social media channels.

Specifications

Image submissions must be at least 300dpi at an approximate minimum size of 6000 pixels x 6000 pixels or 500mm x 500mm, saved as either a .jpg or .tif file size 6MB or greater. Please submit your images here.

Past Recipients

December 2025 Winner – Heather Russell

In this video, we can see dermal fibroblasts from the Spiny Mouse(acomys cahirinus), an animal capable of regenerating skin tissue, that were cultured in high density conditions ( 100% confluence) for 6 days,  at which point, they began to spontaneously fuse and differentiate into contracting muscle- like cells. This differentiation was then validated by immunocytochemistry staining for alpha- smooth muscle actin, Desmin and f-actin staining, which showed fusion of the cells and a long cytoskeleton spanning the plates. There was minimal cell death, suggesting it is not an expansion of certain subtype, with all the cells taking on this phenotype.

July 2025 PhD Winner – Peter King Ho Lee

Cross section of a skin organoid stained with collagen-iv (COL4; red) and cytokeratin-10 (K10; green). Skin organoids were formed by sequentially self-assembling healthy donor dermal fibroblasts and matching donor keratinocytes at a 1:1 ratio, 5000 cells each using low-adhesion plates. Skin organoids at day 6 showed COL4 expression by keratinocytes localised to the fibroblast-keratinocyte interface suggesting an early dermal-epidermal junction, in contrast to K10 which was not found at the interface but rather localised distal to the interface. Keratinocytes were either +COL4/-K10 or -COL4/+K10 suggesting a distinction between basal and differentiated keratinocytes, and therefore stratification of keratinocytes. This data shows that a 3D organoid model of skin can capture some aspects of the native skin biology better than conventional monolayer culture models and has potential for rapid screening applications.

July 2025 EMCR Winner – Anna Antipov

Image shows segmented subset of image data (2,500 x 2,500 pixels) showing overlayed colour survey for collagen fibre orientation analysis of unwounded porcine skin. Single colour indicates high coherency of fibre direction with red hues indicating vertically aligned fibres and green-blue hues indicating horizontal alignment. Unwounded porcine skin samples were collected, sectioned at 4µm and stained with picrosirius red to identify and quantify collagen fibres in the tissue. Polarised light microscopy was utilised to acquire image data which was then qualitatively analysed with software to show local orientation of fibres throughout the image. The resulting image shows collagen fibres assembled in a basket-weave patten with random and multi-directional alignment. This data helps to visualise the structure of normal skin – which can then be compared to skin from healed wounds following treatment application to assist in assessment of treatment efficacy and its promotion o