What happens when researchers are challenged to communicate their work through art, humour and photography?
The inaugural Creative Communication Competition set out to answer this question as part of National Science Week 2026; bringing together researchers and staff from nine ARC Centres of Excellence for a fun, friendly competition to communicate research in accessible, engaging and unexpected ways.
Participants could submit up to three entries across six categories, with entries judged on creativity, originality, clear research communication and visual impact. The public was also invited to vote for their favourites, with a People’s Choice prize awarded in each category. Plant Success researchers embraced the challenge, submitting 21 entries across the categories – you can explore them below.
Together, the Centres showcased the incredible diversity of Australian research and the many different ways researchers can communicate their work beyond traditional academic publications and presentations.
We thank all the participants for sharing their research and creativity, as well as our judges Bonnie Johnson, A/Prof Jen Martin and Alicia Sometimes, and the community members who helped make the inaugural competition a success.
Most importantly, we hope these entries demonstrate that research communication can be informative, creative, surprising, and even funny.
Drawing / Painting / Sculpture
Photography (including Microscopy)
Congratulations to Chaitanya Purushothama, who won the Judges’ Choice First Prize for Stomata – The breathing pores of Life, and Hamza Ramzan, who won the People’s Choice Prize for Listening to my mungbean plants.
Comic / Graphic Novel / Zine
Meme
Congratulations to Thomas Crow, who won the Judges’ Choice 2nd Prize for Genomic prediction, and Hamza Ramzan, who won the People’s Choice Prize for PhD student life.
1-minute video
Congratulations to Md. Shohel Rana, who won the People’s Choice Prize for An empirical experiment.
Thank you to the eight other ARC Centres of Excellence that joined us to bring the competition to life: Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), 21st Century Weather, Innovations in Peptide and Protein Science, OzGrav, Plants for Space, Dark Matter, Synthetic Biology, and GETCO2.
