The Scientist at Work photo competition, hosted by scientific journal Nature, is an annual contest that encourages scientists across all disciplines to share images to celebrate and showcase the “interesting, challenging, striking and colorful” projects that scientists undertake around the world.
Now in its seventh year, the 2026 competition saw five winning images – with Gunnar Hartmann, an undergraduate student in BioGeoSciences at the University of Koblenz in Germany, taking the overall crown.