This week, the "Professor Jordi Sabater Pi" awards were delivered in the tradition-steeped chamber of the Barcelona city hall. Aimed at secondary school students, the awards seek to promote the study of human social behaviour from an evolutionary perspective, based on direct observation of primates, and to develop the results of such study into an audiovisual presentation. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the "Social Brain", Chair at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the Barcelona Education Consortium and the Barcelona Zoo, and it counts on the collaboration of the Barcelona Science Park, the Jordi Sabater Pi Collection, and other interested bodies.

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This year marks the second annual edition of the competition and more than 300 students from fifteen Barcelona schools took part. First place was awarded to the Sant Josep de Calassanç School. Second place went to the Montserrat School, and third place was won by the Josep Comas i Solà Centre. The three prize-winning audiovisual presentations, along with the remaining entries, can be viewed by visiting the web page which is dedicated to the awards on the web site of the “Social Brain” Chair. The Barcelona Science Park also presented a special prize “to the finest naturalist’s sketch of a primate”, aimed at stimulating students’ observational skills and creativity. The special prize, an initiative instigated by Jordi Sabater Pi himself, was awarded to Marta López, a student at the Montserrat School. Her drawings and the drawings of the other entrants can also be found at the web page mentioned above.

Attending the awards ceremony were Montserrat Ballarin, Barcelona city councillor for Education; Òscar Vilarroya, Director of the “Social Brain” Chair; Oriol Busquets, head of the Educational Innovation and Research Service in the Education Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia; Laura Agüera, Executive Director of the Barcelona Zoo and Chairperson for the “Professor Jordi Sabater Pi” awards; Manel Blasco, Director of the Barcelona Education Consortium; Rosina Malagrida, Director of Communications at the Barcelona Science Park; and Jordi Sabater Pi himself, Professor Emeritus of the University of Barcelona and Director of the Sabater Pi Collection, housed at the Barcelona Science Park.

The purpose of the UAB’s “Social Brain” Chair, which is sponsored by the Barcelona city government, is to foster in-depth study of social neuroscience, an emerging scientific discipline that seeks to shed new light on the social sphere of human activity.