Action and Impact on Campus, First place | An outreach event at the Stanford Student Observatory welcomed around 170 members of the public to learn about science and our place in the universe. This image shows the stars revolving around the celestial pole and planes leaving from the San Francisco International Airport. | Peter Marinos, Postdoctoral scholar, KIPAC, School of Humanities and Sciences
Action and Impact in the Field, Second place | Philippe Roberge, PhD ’26, uses a laser for polar alignment to image the Whirlpool Galaxy in Pinnacles National Park, California. | Max Kessler, PhD student, Mechanical Engineering
Action and Impact in the Field, First place | EPS 5 students camp under the Milky Way during a field trip to the California Coast. | Jacob Long, PhD student, Earth and Planetary Sciences
Action and Impact in the Field, Third place | Marine technicians aboard the Nathaniel B Palmer deploying a conductivity, temperature, and depth instrument for phytoplankton research above the Australian-Antarctic ridge. | Cara Askren, Class of 2026, Earth Systems
Action and Impact in the Field, Honorable mention | A native blue-banded bee pollinates a Melastoma plant on the island of Minjerribah, Australia. This plant-pollinator interaction was observed while surveying the visitation patterns of native Australian bees. There are over 1,700 native bee species across the continent. | Hannah McGoran, Class of 2025, Environmental Systems Engineering, Master’s student, Mechanical Engineering
Action and Impact on Campus, Second place | Fabiola Santiago, president of the nonprofit Mi Oaxaca, watches her son plant an Agave sisalana seedling at the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm during a Prakash Lab co-sponsored event with the Stanford Humanities Center research workshop “Fiber Optics.” | Kevin Ly, PhD student, Bioengineering
Action and Impact on Campus, Third place | Stanford lands safeguard California tiger salamanders. Lake Lagunita serves as an especially important breeding ground for these rare amphibians. | TJ Francisco, PhD student, Earth System Science
Action and Impact on Campus, Honorable mention | The Stanford Student Observatory opens its doors and telescopes to visitors on campus. | Dean DeVlugt, Staff, Stanford Department of Public Safety
Beauty in Nature, First place | Volcan Fuego, the world’s most regularly erupting volcano, spews out lava at dawn near the village of Antigua, Guatemala. | Philippe Roberge, PhD student, Earth System Science
Beauty in Nature, Second place | A sooty albatross swoops in front of a large iceberg on a windy day in the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean. | James Lauer, PhD student, Earth System Science
Beauty in Nature, Third place | A baby humpback under the watchful eye of its mother, off the coast of Moʻorea. | Laurie LaPat-Polasko, Alum, MS ’80, Engineer ’83
The Challenges We Face, First place | Stanford@SEA students using photogrammetry to model a rare Spur and Groove reef formation at Mangareva. This reef structure plays an important role in local coastal protection and was visibly impacted by the 2024 global bleaching event. | Erika Tande Hill, Class of 2026, Earth and Planetary Sciences
The Challenges We Face, Second place | Burnt washer and dryer inside a collapsed home after the Eaton Fire in Los Angeles, California. | Frida D. Garcia Ledezma, PhD student, Earth System Science
The Challenges We Face, Third place | Lightning illuminates a towering cumulonimbus cloud above Lake Constance, photographed from a June 2024 flight amid storms that caused severe flooding across Europe. | Albert Wu, PhD student, Computer Science
The Challenges We Face, Honorable mention | A hermit crab discovers lighter litter on South Ari Atoll, Maldives. | Stephanie Lim, PhD student, Earth System Science; co-photographer: David Kwan
The Challenges We Face, Honorable mention | Migration and environmental health impacts collide when people seeking work and a better life end up in jobs like fishing with mosquito nets, which is destructive to both human health and coastal ecosystems. | Xavier Basurto, Professor, Environmental Social Sciences
For more information
The full story, including more information about the contest, was originally published by Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
