Student Meeting: “Famelab Catania 2018”

Famelab is a science communication competition with the aim of entertain by talking science. Since its launch in 2005 in Cheltenham (UK) Famelab has become the world’s biggest communication contest for scientists, and today the event includes more than thirty countries. This challenge is open to young researchers, university students and anyone involved in science who loves talking about a scientific topic in an effective way. In fact, the competitors have only three minutes to tell the object of their research activity or a fascinating scientific topic to a heterogeneous public (researchers, university and high-school students, families…), only with the help of their communication skills and small objects of everyday life. In each local contest, the “famelabers” are judged by a selected jury (scientists, communicators, journalists…). The jury choose the two winners who will participate to the “masterclass”, a three-days training event with professional science communicator, and then to the national and, eventually, international competition.

Since 2017 Catania is one of the italian selection sites for Famelab, and for the second year EPS Young Minds team has been directly involved in the organization of the event as major sponsor, providing also technical support services. In particular, based on the big success of the 2017 edition in terms of participants and feedbacks from the public, in 2018 the YM section proposed a new three-days format for the local event: two semi-finals and the final contest. In each day, the YM section and invited a high-profile scientist to be part of the jury, and to do a seminar about frontier research topics at the end of contest. The three invited high-level scientists were:

• Barbara Mazzolai, Director of the Center for Micro-BioRobotics of the IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), who talked about bioinspired robotics and the future of robotics.
• Luigi Cattivelli, Director of the Genomics Research Center of the Agrigultural Research Council, who presented his research activity on genetics and molecular biology of cereals.
• Eugenio Coccia, Rector of the Gran Sasso Science Institute and one of the authors of the discovery gravitational waves and of the first observation of black holes, who talked about the born of a new astronomy with gravitational waves.

At the beginning and at the end of the three presentations, the speakers did not lose the opportunity to acknowledge the YM section and in general the YM philosophy. A great participation of scientists and students was appreciated not only during the contest but also during the presentations, and there were also strong interactions with the three speakers, moderated and catalysed by the YM members.