ZMT - Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung

14.9.16 | Katie Nelson, a ZMT doctoral student, is one of 15 winners of this year’s university competition. The jury awarded her a grant worth 10,000 euros for her project to make a socio-economic evaluation of a prototype of a virtual coral reef developed at the ZMT. In the upcoming months Katie will implement her project.

A blog that explains current marine research in comic format to children, dinner events where you can learn about the sea as food source, and train stations where you can inform yourself about the effects of microplastics in the ocean: These ideas for presenting topics of ocean and marine research originated as part of a university competition in the Science Year 2016*17 – Seas and Oceans “Show Your Research!”

A jury has awarded 15 young scientists and research groups 10,000 euros each for their communication concepts. The teams from all over Germany now have one year to use the prize money to implement their outstanding ideas.

The challenge in the university competition: The communication concept should make the applicant’s respective field of research easy to understand and be as interactive as possible. At the same time it should highlight the social significance of the research – these were the jury’s main criteria for selecting the winners. The aim of the competition is to promote direct dialogue between young researchers at German universities and the public and to offer young scientists a platform. The university competition is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

What happens next? At the end of September 2016 the winning teams of “Science in Dialogue” will receive training in a workshop on strategies and planning measures for science communication. In September 2017 the jury will review the 15 projects once again: Who did the best job of implementing his/her idea? Which project was best in making the research project interesting and understandable for society?

Until then, the teams will keep the public informed about the progress of their project: On the website www.hochschulwettbewerb.net, they will blog about the current status and the challenges and successes they experience in the implementation of their idea. Here everyone can track how far along the illustrators are with their comics, when and where the first dinner event will take place and how many back stories about microplastics have already been filmed for those waiting at train stations and airports.

These are the winners from Bremen:

3D Virtual Reef Prototype: A Socio-Economic Analysis
Jacobs University Bremen, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research
Contact: Susanne Eickhoff | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ocean Inc. – The Ocean Game
University of Bremen, artec – Center for Sustainability Research
Contact: Eberhard Scholz | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Riddle of the Sandbar
University of Bremen, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Contact: Fanni Aspetsberger | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Once upon a time... Science Short Stories for Children
University of Bremen, MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
Contact: Jana Stone | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For more information about all of all projects, please visit: www.hochschulwettbewerb.net/die-gewinnerprojekte.