Everything seems to happen really fast this afternoon, as the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, the CNIO, fills up with visitors of all ages! It’s been hours of planning, wondering which experiment will be the most surprising, which image will be the most striking… And now it’s time to receive a barrage of questions and initiate budding scientists into research: the ideal audience for CNIO volunteers.
As time is too short to show the entire centre to more than three hundred people, correspondents located in key research facilities connect via videoconference with the CNIO Auditorium to show the cell culture room, the liquid nitrogen room and the laboratories.
Extracting DNA from tomato, observing cells with various microscopy techniques and understanding how to decipher the three-dimensional structure of proteins are some of the activities offered by the CNIO during Researchers’ Night.
But CNIO’s Night also manages to overcome physical barriers. For the second year in a row, those who could not sign up, or were not in Madrid, had the opportunity to attend a “live” broadcast from our Instagram account @CNIOstopcancer. The video has been posted on the social network.
Here you can see a short excerpt:
Brand new this year, and a big hit with the audience, was our high school webinar ‘Do you want to do research? Ask us!’ Fifty middle and high school classrooms from schools in many regions of the country logged on!
The European Researchers’ Night is a European Union initiative held simultaneously in 350 European cities. In Madrid it is promoted by the Regional Ministry of Science, Universities and Innovation and coordinated by the Fundación para el Conocimiento madri+d. The project is funded by the European Union within the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme – Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.
At the CNIO, the conference is part of the Centre’s outreach strategy through the Dean’s Office, together with the CNIO Training Programme.
