The second edition of the Games of Science has opened its doors and is waiting for master’s students, PhD students and UB researchers to join the competition and bring science closer to the public.
The event offers young researchers from Romania access to public communication workshops, a competition with prizes of 2,000 euros and access to a global community of changemakers.
Organized by Social Innovation Solutions in partnership with the University of Bucharest and other universities in the country, Games of Science is a project intended to promote science communication for the public that focuses on developing the skills of students and researchers to become the best presenters of a scientific topic.
How to register to the competition?
The project is open to Romanian master’s and doctoral students, as well as researchers, university teaching staff, teaching staff in pre-university education and other specialists aged 20-35 working in educational and research institutions or in other organizations with a scientific profile.Registration for the training and competition is free and can be done here.The finalists of the preselection that will take place after each of the eight training sessions will be able to participate in the final. The 8 training sessions in public communication are free and take place in major university centers as follows. Enrollment is not conditioned by belonging to the host universities, but by the possibility of being present in the respective city, on the announced dates.
● Bucharest, March 9-10, University of Bucharest
● Cluj-Napoca, March 16-17, “Babeș-Bolyai” University
● Iasi, March 23-24, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University
● Brașov, March 30-31, Transilvania University
● Timișoara, April 10-11, West University
● Bucharest, April 20-21, Polytechnic University
● Online, April 3-4 (“Lucian Blaga” University in Sibiu) and April 22-23 (open).
Which are the stages of the competition?
During the training sessions, participants learn to speak in public, learn how to use their emotions to be more persuasive, exercise presenting complex topics of their research in plain language, and prepare to compete in the Games of Science format, in the final with prizes of 2000 euros. The final is an original format with the aim of encouraging young researchers to train together to explain complex ideas and processes. The competition has elimination rounds of presentations of 15, 30, 60, 120 and 180 seconds. Among the members of the jury we mention Cristian Presură, PhD in physics, researcher at Philips, Dani Petrache, system engineer at Thales Alenia Space, Sorin Cebotari, founder of infoclima.ro and Ciprian Stănescu, President and CEO of Social Innovation Solutions, organizer of the Games of Science.
“Games of Science is the most important project in which I am involved, not only because I was there from the first moment, since Gabriel Ivan, who coordinated all FameLab editions from the British Council, proposed its development, but especially because the reactions of those involved in the first edition showed me that the project has the ability to change lives and, perhaps, society.
Participants don’t just learn to speak publicly about their research work, they learn to work, explore and research together and that makes them unstoppable. I can’t wait to meet this year’s participants!”, noted Ada Roseti, Games of Science coordinator, PhD student at the University of Bucharest and specialist in public communication of science.The project is developed and implemented by Ada Roseti together with Social Innovation Solutions and the British Council, together with universities from 6 cities in Romania: University of Bucharest, “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi, “Transilvania” University in Brașov, West University in Timișoara, “Lucian Blaga” University in Sibiu and Politehnica University in Bucharest, as well as other educational and business organizations in Romania.
The first Games of Science edition, which took place in 2022 as a continuation of the FameLab Romania competition carried out in previous years by the British Council, was part of the “Science for all” winning project within the CIVIS Open Lab program, held between March – April 2022. You can find more details on the 2022 edition here and here.