Centres Científics i Tecnològics UB

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25.01.2019

NanoEduca program, National Award for Scientific Communication

The NanoEduca program developed in the CCITUB of the University of Barcelona and developed jointly with the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nano Technology (ICN), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Center for Specific Pedagogical Resources for Support to the Innovation and Educational Research (CESIRE), has been awarded the National Prize for Scientific Communication 2018 granted by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRi) and the Generalitat of Catalonia.

The program has been awarded for the work of introducing Nanoscience and nanotechnology among students and secondary and high school teachers. The prize will be released during the second half of 2019. It should be noted that this year the University of Barcelona has been doubly awarded. Also, the Nanoedica program, the Dra. Licia Verde, ICMS research cosmologist at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), has been awarded the 2018 National Research Award.

A program that generates scientific vocations

Nanoeduca is an educational and informative program that aims to bring nanotechnology and nano-science closer to society. To achieve this, young people, future citizens, have been targeted, "so that this area of knowledge is part of their culture and knowledge, necessary for the near future, because many of them will work on tasks related to this field.", As stressed by Dr. Jordi Díaz, ideologist of the activity and technician of the Nanometric Techniques Unit of the CCiTUB.

In words of Dr. Seoane, director of the CCiTUB, "this award is a recognition not only of the work of a large team of work but also of a new collaboration philosophy: different institutions joining efforts to create a perfectly coordinated network to promote the knowledge society and stimulate the interest of young people by science and technology. Let's hope it is the first of many collaborations for the sake of the dissemination and science"

What is NanoEduca?

Nanoeduca was born in 2014, as an idea of Dr. Jordi Díaz and Dr. Gerard Oncins, technicians of the Nanometric Techniques Unit of the CCiTUB, with the collaboration of the Institut de Ciències de l'Educació of the UB and the Institut of Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (IN2UB), and with the support of the Unitat de Cultura Científica (UCC + i). The objective was to bring nanotechnologies closer to students, especially in high school and high school. To achieve this they saw the participation and involvement of the teaching staff of their own institutes as essential. To stop this, they organized the first training for teachers of Vocational and Secondary Education with the collaboration of the Institute of Education Sciences of the Universitat de Barcelona (ICE).

Based on different proposals from ICN2 and UAB, received at CESIRE, the CCiTUB project was transformed into the current model, the Nanoeduca program.

The coastal program of three differentiated but complementary parts:

  1. The training of secondary school teachers organized from the CCiTUB together with the ICE.
  2. The Nanokit: A pedagogical suitcase with material for experiments, as well as guides for teachers and students, which is delivered to the teachers so that students can do experiments in the classrooms. Developed for the most part thanks to the Severo Ochoa financing from ICN2 and a FEcyt project (2016).
  3. An annual poster and video contest.

The award-winning program has arrived since 2015 to more than 6,000 students from more than 300 educational centers, mainly from Catalonia, as well as from the Basque Country, Madrid, Salzburg (Austria).

The awards

La Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació, with the support of the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya, calls each year the National Research Awards. These awards recognize and reflect the diverse facets of both the research activity and the initiatives of communication and scientific dissemination, of scientific patronage and of public and private cooperation in R + I projects in Catalonia. In the case of the National Award for Scientific Communication, the best communication and scientific dissemination initiative in Catalonia is awarded in any of the possible formats and existing media publications, digital or paper, radio and television programs, websites, exhibitions and festivals, among others, I isolated as the professionals of these fields'.

The awards, awarded by the FCRi, consist of five categories: National Research Prize, Recerca al Talent Jove, Mecenatge Científic, the Public Private Partnership in R + I and, finally, the National Prize for Scientific Communication, which this year has been granted to the NanoEduca program.

This year's jury was chaired by Antoni Esteve, president of FCRi, and has been integrated by Mar Capeans, leading researcher of the Grup de Tecnologia de Detectors of Laboratori Europeu de Física de Partícules (CERN); Maria Àngela Vilallonga; Professor of Philology at the University of Girona (UdG) and vice-president of the Philological Section of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC); Roderic Guigó, coordinator of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Program at the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Professor of Bioinformatics at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and National Research Prize 2017; Antonio Huerta, professor of Mathematics Applied to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and director of the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA); Francesc Xavier Grau, Secretary of Universities and Research of the Generalitat de Catalunya; and Joan Gómez Pallarès, general director of Recerca de la Generalitat de Catalunya. The secretary has been the general director of l'FCRi, Rafael Marín.