SEB Bulletin July 2005
SEB Postgraduate Outreach Competition Winners
The SEB in collaboration with the Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience (www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/) launched a competition earlier this year for postgraduate students to enter an outreach poster to be presented at the SEB's Annual Main Meeting in Barcelona. The aim of the competition was to identify and reward young scientists for their hard work in reaching out to the public and schools to enthuse and inform them about the wonders of science. We received a wide variety of exciting and interesting initiatives that young scientists are involved in from around the UK so it was a hard decision to find our two winners. However, congratulations go to Katherine Cox (Oxford University) and Lara Meischke (St. Andrews) who impressed the judges with their outstanding poster abstracts.
Katherine's entry described how she conceived and developed the 'Wow How!' science festival with the help of the Oxford Museums volunteer outreach officer. This interactive science event was aimed at families and run by young scientists. It was free to all and was held on Saturday February 7th 2004, at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. With 6 colourful lectures covering bugs to volcanoes and 18 hands on science stalls, they managed to attract over 2000 visitors.
Meanwhile, Lara described her experiences as a Researcher in Residence (coordinated by the Centre for Science Education) where she contributed to the 'DNA in the Garden' Exhibition which was funded by the BBSRC and held in the St. Andrews Botanical Gardens. Lara answered questions from the public and helped to demystify DNA to over 1000 visitors.
For their efforts Lara and Katherine have received £250 each towards the Barcelona meeting where they will present their posters as part of the Education E3 session. Come along and view their colourful and inspirational posters!
The SEB and Centre for Bioscience acknowledges the high standard of all the entries to the competition for which everyone is to be highly commended.