2026 ICOB Image Contest
- Date：
2026 ICOB Image Contest
The 2026 ICOB image contest offers a great opportunity for ICOB members to showcase their artistic perspective of scientific imaging. The contest rules are listed below. Please submit your image by October 18th, 2026.
Registration link: https://forms.gle/Pof4KJHvZiczNNF8A
Rules:
1. Participant should submit his/her own digital image file ("entry"), and the image can be from either optical or electronic microscopy. The minimum resolution of the image is 1024x1024 and the maximum file size is 10 MB in TIF, PNG, or JPG format.
2. Eligible participants include students, research assistants and postdocs affiliated with ICOB.
3. The entries should be artistic and research-related.
4. Each participant is only allowed to submit one entry.
5. Participants must ensure that the entry does not violate copyright law, and will take the full legal responsibility for any resulting loss if the copyright law is breached by the entry; the organizer will not bear the legal responsibility.
6. The entries should be "unpublished". The term "published" refers to the image published in any publications (including scientific journals and public media), or previously awarded images in any image award contests (different samples and image files in similar themes are considered unpublished).
7. By submitting the entry to the organizer (ICOB), participant grants the organizer a perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, and sub-licensable license to use the image (including but not limited to reproduce, adapt, compile, publicly broadcast, publicly (re)transmit, publicly display, distribute, etc.) in any form, medium or technology, whether it be on website, for physical or online exhibition, publication, advertisement, calendar, poster or for any other use desired by the organizer.
Evaluation:
ICOB PIs will serve as judges and vote for one ICOB Image Award and several Honorable Mentions. The awardees will be announced in the award ceremony of the ICOB Academic Poster Competition in November 5th.
Awards:
l ICOB Image Award: A subsidy for attending one academic conference (up to 50,000 TWD), along with a canvas print of the awarded image.
l Excellent Honorable mentions: Canvas print of the awarded image.
Note:
1. Winners may provide higher quality image files for printing.
2. ICOB Image Award winners (eligibility: salary or scholarship paid by Academia Sinica, regardless of the funding source) may receive a subsidy for one academic conference. Subsidies must be reimbursed based on actual expenses in 2027.
FAQ:
Q1: What does “research-related” mean?
A1: Research relevance means that the raw image must be optical microscopy or electron microscopy images captured during the research process, and the participants should use such images to create their entry.
Q2: What should be included in the “brief description of the image”?
A2: Please briefly describe the artistic concept or creative idea that the work is intended to convey. Relevant scientific background and biological significance may be included if appropriate but are not required.
Q3: Is the image with post-processing eligible?
A3: Yes, the image with post-processing can be accepted.
The post-processing techniques include but not limited to: Multiple images assembly, Filtering, 3D model rendering, colorizing, applying the special lookup table (LUT), montage, kymograph, converting time-lapse images into a plot image…etc. Just mentation the post-processing techniques when you submit the entry.
Q4: Are videos eligible?
A4: We only accept single image format this time.
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Contact:
Po-Yen Lin (林伯彥)
pylin@gate.sinica.edu.tw
2789-9526
Wei-Chen Chu (朱韋臣)
weichen01@gate.sinica.edu.tw
2787-1531