We are pleased to announce the results of the 2025 Ars Scientia Essay Prize, a campus-wide competition that invited UBC undergraduates to reflect on the vital, generative connections between art and science. This year’s entries offered fresh insights, compelling examples, and bold reflections on how creative and scientific thinking can inform and enrich one another. After much deliberation, our judges selected one winning essay and three distinguished runners-up. We extend our congratulations to these students and invite you to read their work, which exemplifies the spirit of Ars Scientia: inquiry, imagination, and interdisciplinary dialogue.
Click on the links below to enjoy the essays.
Dalmar Yusuf is currently pursuing a Dual Degree in Neuroscience and Anthropology under the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts. Seeking to gain a holistic understanding of human experiences, he is particularly interested in how media influences cultural understandings of the brain. He likes to write and to dance when he can, and has recently acquired a love for community radio.
“With a strong voice throughout and an opening that sets the scene, Dalmar Yusuf’s essay transports the reader into the heart of a neuroscience lab. What follows is a deeply felt meditation on human experience at the intersection of science and art. The writing is not only engaging but artful in the way it brings these two worlds into dialogue.”
– Shahrzad (Zad) Abbasi
Read Dalmar’s prize-winning essay here.
Ever Roberts is in her fourth year at UBC, studying applied animal biology. She is deeply fascinated by reproductive and developmental sciences and has a passion for poetry, which, to her, is a safe-keeping place for reflections on nature, literature, science, and her lore. On campus, she can often be found in the CIRS building, volunteering for the food hub market, organizing a poetry event, or bothering the building manager, Tim, who encouraged her to write this essay.
“With lyrical insight and intellectual depth, Ever Roberts’s “The Body of the Poet: An Essay on the Entwinement of Art and Science” explores the profound and often overlooked connections between scientific inquiry and artistic expression. Blending poetic imagery with physiological precision, the essay celebrates the shared pursuit of understanding that unites artists and scientists. It is both a reflection and a call to action—encouraging readers to bridge disciplines, speak across boundaries, and embrace the beauty that emerges when creativity and curiosity converge.ection of science and art. The writing is not only engaging but artful in the way it brings these two worlds into dialogue.”
– Shelly Rosenblum
Read Ever’s essay here.
Robin Lei is in her 4th year of a BA in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Department of Philosophy. She is interested in the relationship between technology and art, and how new technologies might shape the future of artistic practice. Outside of school, she enjoys rock climbing, advocates for women’s empowerment, and spends her time creating animations and games.
“It was a joy to read Robin Lei’s exploration of AI-generated art as an intersection of scientific design and artistic creativity—this theme is timely and relevant. She challenges traditional notions of agency and authorship, inviting readers to reconsider what constitutes creativity in both human and machine contexts. Her work does an excellent job of interdisciplinary integration, bridging art theory, computer science, and philosophy. It demonstrates nicely the generative potential of cross-disciplinary thinking and models exactly the type of insight this contest sought to celebrate.reativity and curiosity converge.ection of science and art. The writing is not only engaging but artful in the way it brings these two worlds into dialogue.”
– James Day
Read Robin’s essay here.
Wendy Yang is in her third year of an Honours Chemistry degree at the University of British Columbia. Born in Winnipeg, raised in Shanghai and Vancouver, she is interested in the intersections of scientific thinking, artistic expression, and their broader ties to history and philosophy. Outside of school, Wendy enjoys digital drawing, photography, listening to music, experimenting with paper cutting, and learning German.
“Using a creative blend of imagination and historical detail, “Bodies, Bones, and Brushstrokes” lives at the very intersection that it seeks to describe. Recalling the reality of forensic science in the time of Qing Dynasty China, yet lensing these details through the more purely creative form of a visual novel, this artful essay serves to question what we even mean when we speak purely of “the sciences”. Ultimately, the topic of how knowledge itself was once made – which is to say: in public, through performance, amid doubt, and beyond today’s disciplinary boundaries – is positioned in a way that is both emotionally evocative and intellectually informed. This is an essay that will challenge readers to see the arts and the sciences as practices that aren’t fixed or sterile or even rigorously separated, but as a deeply human pursuits, entangled products of culture, power, interpretation, and perhaps even something elusive like the truth.“
– Timothy Taylor
Read Wendy’s essay here.