Calmast wins Grand Jury Award

2Ways Communicating Life Science Research

European Project Coordinated by the European Science Events Association

A Science in Society project funded by the European Commission FP7

CALMAST, an Irish Science outreach centre won the prestigious Grand Jury Award at a major European festival in Brussels for a game developed with UK partners to explain gene mutation. 

The announcement of the 2 Ways Grand Jury Award at the European Parliament Brussels.

L to R, Dr Ruth Barber, Dr Cas Kramer, Dr Sheila Donegan, Eoin Gill, Dr Karen Moss with Professor Gadi Glaser, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Chairman Judging panel.

 The “Evolution Game” is a board game that takes place on an alien planet. Each player or team sees their alien change through DNA mutations:  evolving to have much different appearances and characteristics. The idea is “learning through fun” and it has been enormously successful when trialled with great success on teenagers in the UK, Ireland and now, Belgium.

The 2Ways project was established to communicate European Life Science Research to the people of Europe. Over 60 research and science events organisations participated in the project which ran through 2009 and 2010. These organisations formed partnerships with groups in other countries and with life science researchers to develop new science outreach presentations to communicate this important research to the public.

These groups came together at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels in December 2010 to participate in the 2ways finals. An expert panel of scientists from Europe and Israel judged all the presentations and at the closing ceremony at the European Parliament awarded the Grand Jury Prize to the Irish- UK project.

The “Evolution Game” does not have winners or losers but nevertheless, the judges were impressed that the teenagers playing it really had a lot of fun and learnt the fundamentals of genetics and that gene mutation could be good as well as bad.

The Partnership was:

Dr Sheila Donegan and Eoin Gill, Calmast, Waterford Institute of Technology

Dr Cas Kramer, Genie, Genetics Outreach Centre University of Leicester

Nicola Suter-Giorgini, Genie, Genetics Outreach Centre University of Leicester

Dr Ruth Barber, Department of Genetics, University of Leicester

Dr Karen Moss, CELS, Centre for Effective Learning in Science, Nottingham Trent University

Below

The setting up the game in Brussels: