Many projects, little time
Of all 87 interesting projects, which stand to visit? Why not ask the experts, the contestants, who spend the times between jury interviews getting to know each other, and each others’ projects.
On Sunday, the Jury interviews of European Union Contest for Young Scientists continued at Suvilahti contest venue. MyScience asked what the contestants thought was the most interesting project, apart from their own. The answers took us on a journey to discover projects varying from 3-D displays to crayfish.
We started from stand number 81, where Melvin Zammit introduced his innovation for a 3-D display. The project is based on an idea of putting transparent images in front of each other to create more natural 3-D visuals.
In Melvin’s opinion, the project really worth mentioning is Lai Xue’s augmented reality solution that incorporates orientation tracking system and displacement tracking system. And those cool goggles.
Lai directed us to Nikita Kalmykov from Russia, whose universal robot could substitute for many robots built only for one purpose.
Nikita said he had found a project a couple of booths away interesting. Israeli team Gal Oren and Nerya Yair Stroh’s leakage detection and discontinuation system is based on a mathematical model and it notices when the average water consumption is exceeded, disconnects the water supply and notifies the consumer with an SMS.
The stands. Photo: Janne Salo.
Gal asked us to turn around to find the next interesting project. Espen Bernton from Norway has studied amphiphilic polymers. His results can help in pharmacological development of better drug delivery systems, in which polymers are used as carriers.
Espen said to look for the next interesting project from the same corridor. Natalie Mitchell from the United Kingdom has developed an auto focusing system for digital microscopy, which can be used to take better images in less time.
Natalie said she’d found Victoria Welander’s project on signal crayfish interesting, as she is also familiar with the subject. Victoria has studied the effect of predators, like perch and pike, on signal grayfish populations in two Swedish lakes.
Natalie suggested to visit team Anna Blum and Erik Rothman from Sweden, who had studied protein aggregation in yeast cells. But the buses to Heureka Science Centre awaited…
Eureka!
After the day at the stands, the contestants got a chance to have a bit of fun in Heureka. The evening started with a welcome speech by the Director of the science centre, Per-Edvin Persson, followed by Good Fire show.
Good fire show in Heureka. Photo: Linnea Töyrylä.
After the flames, Sky French from the UK gave a lecture to the contestants. “Not too long ago I was like you, interested in science but not sure what to do with it,” she said. Now, at 25 French has finished her Ph.D., and works at the University of Cambridge.
French said that at the age of 11, she wanted to become an astronaut, but soon realized that she didn’t want to die and wasn’t going to be tall enough. A few years later she understood that what she really wanted was to understand more about the universe.
Nowadays, French’s field is particle physics, and she lectured about research done in CERN with the massive Large Hadron Collider.
After the official part, it was time to unwind in Heureka’s fun and educative exhibitions.
Victoria Welander at Heureka Classics exhibition. Photo: Linnea Töyrylä.
MyScience will offer news, videos and photos from the 23rd European Union Contest for Young Scientists during the event. Check out also MyScience on Flickr and Vimeo.
Are you EUCYS 2011 participant? Now it’s your chance to get your research published in a peer-reviewed journal. Read more about European Journal for Young Scientists and Engineers.
Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.