Best of CASE District VI Award
 

Institution: Missouri University of Science & Technology

Title of entry: Foliagraft Student Research Team

About this entry: The initial project was to photograph a unique student research team for a website story. After doing the photographs, they were held to use for the college's annual report and we created additional studio images to use as a cover and support images.
• "A team of three undergraduate students from Missouri S&T recently won a $15,000 first place award at the Regnier Venture Creation Challenge in Kansas City for their project titled 'Foliagraft.' Foliagraft is a new way to use spinach leaves and stem cells to help burn patients and others with wounds and conditions that require a skin graft."
..." 'they got spinach leaves and then removed all the cells from the leaves – the leaves are all white at this point, like ghosts. There are no cells in the “veins” or in the actual leaf tissue.' "

Initial images were created in a biology lab with the three students showing their process. There images we made of them working together, as well as details of the spinach leaves in process of being stripped of cells.

Once the marketing team saw the images the story was pushed to the annual report and we created studio images with the student team's lead, Abby. She was photographed surrounded by spinach, creating a fun, impactful image for the report's cover. A double exposure was also created with her arm and some spinach if the college's leadership elected not to have a single team member on the cover.