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Carla Vázquez during the presentation of the PCB’s Fes Recerca! project at ComCiRed (Photo: PCB).
 26.04.2018

The Barcelona Science Park takes part in ComCiRed

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) organised the Comunicar Ciencia en Red (Communicating Science through Networks, ComCiRed) meeting for the ninth year running, which brought together members of the Red de Unidades de Cultura Científica y de la Innovación (Network of Scientific Culture and Innovation Units; UCC+i) in Granada on 19 and 20 April. The UCC+i and the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) played an active role in the conference.

 

This two-day event gave some 80 members of the UCC+i network the opportunity to get to know each other and share experiences and good practices. Workshops were also organised on post-truth in the social media and how to address the gender perspective in scientific communication. Each of the Scientific Culture and Innovation Units were given the chance to put forward a speaker to present their unit’s most outstanding project to the attendees. They all voted on the most inspiring project of 2017, which turned out to be “El futuro visita el hospital” (The future comes to the hospital) by the Ingeniosanos group at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT).

Carla Vázquez, from the Science Dissemination Area at the Barcelona Science Park, spoke about the 10 years of the Do Research!  project, which is part of the Research in society programme. The objective of this programme is to promote awareness of “live science”, in other words, the research currently being conducted at the research sites of the PCB and the University of Barcelona. These workshops are intended for secondary school and/or higher training students, to allow them to take part in experiments set within the context of real-life research projects. This provides the students with first-hand experience of what it means to carry out research in areas such as genetics, biotechnology or biomedicine.
 

 

Bringing science closer to the public and promoting scientific careers among young people

The following projects organised by the PCB’s UCC+i within the Research in Society programme deserve particular mention: the annual Live Research fair, targeting schools and the general public in order to raise their awareness of the research being conducted in Catalonia’s ground-breaking laboratories, promoting dialogue between the general public and researchers and kindling an interest in scientific careers; the BATX2LAB hands-on experience project for higher secondary students who get to do their research projects at the PCB; and finally Discover research!, a project intended for primary pupils aged 10 to 11, consisting of a guided tour of the PCB and a workshop led by monitors and researchers to allow younger children to conduct scientific experiments following the scientific method.

About the UCC+i network 

The Scientific Culture and Innovation Units (UCC+i) have become one of the main agents in scientific outreach in Spain, with a view to promoting scientific training and culture among the public. The UCC+i network, coordinated by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), was created to promote the exchange of experiences and the search for synergies between its members, in order to optimise their resources and improve the quality of their products and services. It currently comprises 81 organisations with a registered UCC+i, one of which is the PCB.