Under the slogan The universe is waiting for you to change it.Will you be the next great scientist to go down in history?, the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) organised a day for 1st, 2nd and 3rd-year secondary students to arouse their interest and their ability to do research and to spark their entrepreneurial spirit. These events, which were held on 22, 23 and 26 October and 11 November, counted on the participation of 112 students from three schools in Catalonia: the Escola Virolai and the Institut Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera from Barcelona, and the Institut Ramon Berenguer IV from Amposta. The initiative was organised as part of the “Science and Technology in Feminine” project, promoted by the Association of Science and Technology Parks of Spain (APTE).

In the first part of the conference days – which were inaugurated by Maria Terrades, General Director of the Barcelona Science Park – the students spoke to three distinguished scientists and technologists to learn about their work, their day-to-day activities (both inside and outside of the laboratory), and the career paths available in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics): Elisabeth Engel, biomedical engineer who is director of the Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies Group of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC); Celia Santos, researcher and PhD student at the IRB Barcelona and co-founder of the Noies al Lab [Girls in the Lab] initiative; and Anna Laromaine, researcher of the Institute of Material Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Women Researchers and Technologists in Catalonia (AMITcat), who features in the Top 100 Leading Women in Spain ranking in 2018.

All together, the students went on a guided tour of the Women who Changed the World exhibition, which shed a light on the research work carried out by some of the world’s most celebrated scientists, responsible for milestone discoveries in the history of humankind. The exhibition will have a travelling format, and will be displayed in the Sagrada Familia library from 21 December to 7 January. It will now be go on a tour of fourteen different schools in Catalonia until June 2019. Simultaneously, the PCB’s Science Diffusion Area created an educational resource for the route format of the exhibition, and also helped to create the What do I want to be when I’m older? guidebook about STEM studies and their possible career paths, of which 150 printed copies were distributed and which can also be consulted online.

The second part of the conference day included the “Put on the lab coat!” workshop, in which the students conducted various experiments related to research in the field of biomedicine and transgenics. After this, another workshop was held to spark their entrepreneurial spirit by challenging them to find innovative solutions to problems related to the Challenges set out in the European Union Research and Innovation Framework Programme, Horizon 2020. 

Based on the concepts discussed in the PCB workshop, the students made a video to submit in the national competition entitled Innovative proposals to overcome the challenges of Europe 2020, which was set up by APTE. From all of the submissions, the Park selected the Ananke project, by a team of students from the Escola Virolai, as the winner, which aimed to prevent tropical diseases by developing a chewing gum made from natural products containing medicinal properties (European blueberry, narrow-leaved purple coneflower, etc.), which change colour upon detecting infections and would be made accessible to everyone in Third World countries.

Each of the videos that were finalists in the national competition were presented in the Talent Woman forum—the most renowned international event for women, science and technology—which came to Spain for the first time between 30 November and 1 December 2018 in the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos in Malaga. APTE were special invitees to the event, presenting its “Science and Technology in Feminine” initiative and participating in three different activities; the “Women who Changed the World” exhibition, participating in three ‘speaker corner’ presentations and taking part in the round-table discussion entitled “The promotion of technological vocations in Science and Technology Parks”. Event highlights can be seen on the APTE [+] website