GeekWire | Barbie puts on a lab coat and finds formula to win holiday diorama contest at Seattle’s Fred Hutch ~ WAPNETREALM

Barbie looks for cures in a table centerpiece display made by lab workers at Fred Hutch in Seattle. (Connor O'Shaughnessy Photo)

We've seen Barbie ride a horse, or cruise the beach in a dune buggy. It's cool to see that she also has an important day job, in the Pollack Lab in the clinical research division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Science Barbie shows up in a tabletop centerpiece as part of a "Winterfest" contest organized by the Immunology Program at Fred Hutch. The contest, in its 11th year, requires that entries must be constructed from lab materials.

The top three submissions win increasingly larger bottles of champagne, and Pollack's entry helped its creators pop the biggest prize on Thursday evening. Images of Barbie and her lab materials showed up in a tweet from Dr. Seth Pollack, who said before voting, "If we don't win this year, it's robbery."

Every winter ⁦@fredhutch⁩ immunology has contest for best #centerpiece made all of lab supplies. If we don't win this year, it's robbery.

Our amazing lab manager Graeme (shown) made ⁦@Barbie⁩ a state of the art lab for the development of toy immunotherapy. pic.twitter.com/IfWclsOxPq

— Seth Pollack (@immunosarc) December 19, 2019

Update: we won!
Thank you and congrats to the competition, well played. though really, if I'm being honest, you never had chance.

— Seth Pollack (@immunosarc) December 20, 2019

Research technician Graeme Black is credited as the mastermind behind the centerpiece. He and lab mates spent about 8 hours (after work) over nearly two weeks on the project.

"We have a fairly small lab so we didn't have as many different materials to work with as some others," Black said. "Instead of going for something super flashy, we focused on creating something life-like and super detailed."

Some of the materials used included:

Pipette box used to create the frame.
Pipette tips used for display tube rack.
Lazy L spreaders (which are used to simplify and enhance bacterial culture procedures) used for the sink faucet, chair legs and other parts.
Cryo vial (used to freeze cells) used to create graduated cylinder and shelf structure.

When they're not creating holiday dioramas, the Pollack Lab studies how to leverage a person's immune system to cure sarcoma, a group of cancers that originate in bones and soft tissues.

Check out images from other contest entries: