Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Five MLFPM fellows participated in  “Science is Wonderful!” on November 10-26, 2021. The initiative aimed to bring together Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions researchers worldwide with classrooms from all over Europe in an online event to inspire pupils and provide a sneak-peek into the exciting world of research. 

On the event platform, teachers could browse the profiles of all 500 participating researchers to select scientists based on research specialty, availability, and language spoken by them. Scientists could also contact teachers to propose activities.  Initial enthusiasm among fellows was high, with individual experiences varying. Read their feedback below.

Anastassia Kolde: I instantly knew I would like to participate when I learned about the “Science is Wonderful!” program. Talking about my research in statistics to kids, in a language that they understand, is really close to my heart. I was ready and eager to meet the pupils, but not a single teacher contacted me. I was also chosen to give a webinar in Estonian, but unfortunately, the technician was the only attendant there. However, I do not regret participating in this program because, as a result, I have a nice presentation suitable for a younger audience with lots of entertaining examples about statistics. This coming year, I will use this presentation in my kids’ school during their Professional and Personal Growth class. Given the opportunity, I’d sign up for the “Science is Wonderful!” program again. Still, I would be more proactive by introducing the program to local schools myself rather than relying on the program’s advertisement capabilities. 

Diane Duroux: The idea of ​​bringing children and scientists together was very promising, but some difficulties arose when connecting with schools. Interested teachers were invited to contact us, but it turned out that I did not receive any requests. After a few days, I tried the search tool available on the platform to filter teachers by language spoken and by a particular interest. I noticed that no French teacher had indicated an interest in mathematics. Therefore, this event did not lead to any exchanges for me. However, I still find it a great initiative. I will probably register again next year and contact the teachers even if they haven’t mentioned interest in math at first glance.

Emese Sükei: For me, “Science is Wonderful!” was an excellent experience. Initially, I was worried because nobody contacted me, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and reach out to a primary school English teacher. I proposed an interactive session in English, where I present the world of machine learning to kids and create some fun quizzes to get them more involved.  She quickly replied and agreed to a call, so I started preparing the material. Explaining my work to elementary school kids was challenging, but their energy and excitement were truly rewarding. I was also contacted by a math teacher from my hometown to set up a session with her class of 14-year olds. I had to speak in Hungarian this time, so I had to first brush up on my technical vocabulary in my native language. We had a lovely session, and I received many great questions from the students. I would sign up again in a heartbeat!

Giulia Muzio: “Science is Wonderful!” has been one of the best outreach events I have ever participated in. I’ve been contacted by five teachers but managed to organize four meetings.  My first meeting was with 14-15 years old students from Croatia who wanted to learn more about machine learning. We had our meeting in English, and we learned the basis of machine learning through interactive games and examples: it’s been enjoyable! The second meeting was with two classrooms of students from Italy, around 10. We discussed together (in Italian this time) DNA and the basis of Genetics. I loved how genuinely interested they were, both in the topic itself and the researcher’s career. DNA and Genetics were the main topics of my third meeting, with very curious 13 years old students from Italy. Finally, my last session was with 16 years old high school students, again from Italy, who wanted to know more about my Ph.D. project and Ph.D. life in general. To conclude, mine was a positive and enriching experience: I learned a lot during this event and hoped the same applied to the students I interacted with.

Pradeep Eranti: I was pretty excited about the chance to meet high-school students, given I did not have similar opportunities during my school days. Not to leave this fantastic opportunity to chance, I actively looked for the schools that facilitate English interactions and contacted around 15 of them. After an initial disappointment as none of them had replied to my inquiries by the end of the event week, luckily, one teacher from Lefkosia, Cyprus, provided me with an opportunity to interact with Grade-12 students studying Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. I found that they were deeply interested in medicine-related studies from their questions. One of them even asked me whether I could find a cure for Asthma through my Ph.D. studies as his classmate suffers from this disease. The students were also interested in knowing how researchers work, especially on disorders and their challenges, our day-to-day lives, etc. “Science is Wonderful!” was a unique outreach experience for me. I am already looking forward to next year’s edition and thinking about interactive activities for the students.

Recently, MLFPM fellow Emese Sükei from University Carlos III de Madrid was able to talk to school kids from Texas and Sweden about her research and to inspire them to become scientists. Read her report below.

“During the Covid-19 lockdown last year, I discovered Skype a Scientist, a program that matches scientists with classrooms worldwide. They aim to connect the general public with researchers from different scientific disciplines, allowing students to meet a scientist and get answers to their questions straight from the source. 

It sounded like a fun activity, so I decided to sign up, and I was enthusiastically waiting to be matched with a classroom. When I was least expecting it at the beginning of December, I was assigned to Kelly Miller’s 5th, 4th, 3rd-grade class from Petersburg Elementary in Petersburg, Texas, USA. Kelly had recently started introducing some of her students to computer science, robotics, and coding and wanted to enhance their interest by setting up an opportunity to talk to a real-world computer scientist. When we connected for the video call, all of a sudden, I found myself in front of a group of eager youngsters asking questions about me, my work, science, programming. It was a truly rewarding experience. 

When I got the email to sign up for another year, I did not hesitate. This time I was quickly matched with Nellie Mildh’s 2nd-year high-school class in the technical program from Pauliskolan in Malmö, Sweden. Nellie is an English teacher who was planning to focus on the theme of technology and society in March, discussing the relationship between culture and technology, and the negative and positive aspects of innovation. She invited me to talk about my work and have an open Q&A session with the students about machine learning and the opportunities and dangers it poses for the future. Since the age group was higher this time, and the students had a technical background, I could go a little more into detail about digital phenotyping and the possibilities machine learning has to offer in the psychological care of patients. 

It was highly inspiring to participate in these calls. I often find it challenging to explain my work to others outside my field. Participating in “Skype a Scientist” was a great exercise in distilling my work to the absolute basics. Furthermore, this provided an excellent opportunity to inform kids, get them excited about machine learning, and perhaps even develop a desire to pursue a career in science.”

“On August 22, 2020, I participated in the “Science Summer” organized by the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. The outreach activity, which lasts until the end of September and is open to the general public free of charge, displays a daily program with lectures, exhibitions, and practical activities related to biology, physics, chemistry, and the history of science, among others.

I joined alongside Anna Fröhlich, Elena Brivio, and Srivaishnavi Loganathan, members of PSciComm, the science communication initiative of IMPRS-TP (the International Max Planck School on Translational Psychiatry, in which I’m enrolled). The group, of which I’m very excited to be part of since mid-2019, focuses on popularising many aspects of neuroscience, with a main focus in prevention, treatment, and stigma reduction of mental diseases among children and adolescents. In the more than two years since its establishment, PSciComm has organized many outreach activities and even published an article in Frontiers for Young Minds.

Our participation in the event at Deutsches Museum consisted of an open-air tent with a linear activity circuit. After passing through a disinfection stand in the entrance to comply with the current COVID19-regulations, visitors were introduced to basic neuroscience concepts with a short poster speech. After a short presentation about the basic structure of the human brain and its comparison with a mouse model, the children and adults could move on to staining mouse brain slices in situ using Cresyl-violet, and watch the result of their work in an actual microscope! A mouse-brain atlas was also provided, alongside previously mounted Golgi stainings which allowed them to see individual neurons and gain some insight into how they’re connected in a real brain. We also had real fixed human brain samples on display (a significant source of awe for many visitors) and a small game inspired by the DANA foundation in which young children could build and connect toy neurons using pipe cleaners. Finally, visitors were given a short speech about mental well-being on their way out and received a miniature copy of the posters on display, including our contact and a hotline for mental health information.

It was extremely inspiring for us to participate in such an event, and we hope it was the case for our visitors as well. Being able not only to talk to young kids about science but to show them and let them play with real samples and tools was an incredible experience. Besides, as mental disorders tend to be more prevalent than many people think, using the opportunity to raise awareness of their existence was very fulfilling as well. On a personal level, and even though I had to use English or rely on colleagues for answering complex questions, this was also a nice occasion to practice my German!”

All MLFPM publications will be listed on https://mlfpm.eu/projects-and-students/mlfpm-publications/.

Our second will take place online on September 21-23, 2020! While we are sad that we won’t be able to meet in person, we are excited about this opportunity to make the event accessible for a wider audience. More information will follow soon!

Certain regions like Lombardy and Alsace are hit particularly hard by COVID-19, resulting in heavily overloaded hospitals and critical care units. At the same time, the burden is much lower in other regions nearby. Would it be possible to distribute the patients more efficiently, resulting in better care for the patients and a lower burden for the health care providers?

This was the question that the MLFPM fellows Bowen, Giovanni, Maguette, Giulia, Lucas and Emese decided to answer, when the European Commission invited to participate in the EUvsVirus hackathon. The event took place on April 24-26, 2020. Participants were requested to develop tools solving COVID-19 related problems in areas ranging from Health & Life over Social & Political Cohesion to Digital Finance.

Based on existing datasets, the team developed a tool to simulate the number of patients in acute and intensive care units in all hospitals in France, including the possibility to transfer patients between hospitals to ensure a better distribution.

It was a great experience seeing a project come to life through the shared effort. On day one we just had a rough idea of what to try, on day three we had a curated github repository and an application available online.

More information:
HospiNet tool
Competition entry on Devpost
GitHub repository

MLFPM beneficiary Qlucore makes its Qlucore Omics Explorer (QOE) available for free for COVID-19 related research to all MLFPM members during a 6 months period. QOE is a software program focused on rapid data exploration and interpretation. It is used by scientists in more than 35 countries, and there are more than 600 articles in peer-reviewed journals referring to QOE. This offer is greatly appreciated.

(Original picture of the coronavirus by Fusion Medical Animation via Unsplash.)