Listen to: Gold, Galahs and the Milky Way: unlocking the universe, on ABC Big Ideas

Additional menu

Science In Public

Science writers, communicators, media, training, and public relations

Tamzin

Future leaders meet in Melbourne to change the world

In Melbourne this month, 2000 young change-makers from 80 countries will meet for the world’s largest international student-led youth conference, the Harvard World Model United Nations (WorldMUN), from 18-22 March.

Now in its 22nd year, with past meetings in Brussels, Geneva, London and Beijing, the world’s future leaders will be hosted here by students from Monash University and RMIT University at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The conference is supported by all levels of government in Australia, and this year, for the first time, they’ve got the backing of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), our regional arm of the United Nations Secretariat.

[Read more…] about Future leaders meet in Melbourne to change the world

Making eye cells from skin cells to understand blindness

Launch and embargo 10.30 am, 18 February 2013
Centre for Eye Research Australia, Level 1, 32 Gisborne Street, East Melbourne

With patient advocate, researcher, and stem cells

Media contacts:
Niall Byrne: 0417 131 977, niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
Georgina Howden Chitty: 0419 391 057, georgina@scienceinpublic.com.au

For CERA:
Emily Woodhams: 0408 370 959, emily.woodhams@unimelb.edu.au

[Read more…] about Making eye cells from skin cells to understand blindness

Nominate your best young scientists for a media boot camp

Fresh Science takes young researchers with no media experience and turns them into spokespeople for science.

More than 60 early-career researchers get a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.

Then we throw the media spotlight on 12 of the best and brightest young scientists, putting them through a four-day media bootcamp in Melbourne.

Nominations are now open and close 5pm, Friday 1 March 2013.

Read on for more information, or jump straight to the nomination page.

[Read more…] about Nominate your best young scientists for a media boot camp

Nominate for Fresh Science 2013

Post image for Nominate for Fresh Science 2013

Fresh Science takes young researchers with no media experience and turns them into spokespeople for science.

More than 60 early-career researchers get a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.

Then we throw the media spotlight on 12 of the best and brightest young scientists, putting them through a four-day media bootcamp in Melbourne.

Nominations are now open and close 5pm, Friday 1 March 2013.

Read on for more information, or jump straight to the nomination page.

We’re looking for:

  • early-career researchers (from honours students to no more than five years post-PhD)
  • a peer-reviewed discovery which has had little or no media coverage
  • some ability to present ideas in everyday English
  • from absolutely any field of science

State finalists will meet journalists and learn essential communication skills in a one day media training course, followed by a public event where they’ll get to practice their new skills.

Then, the 12 best candidates from the state finals will head to Melbourne for the Fresh Science national final – an intense four-day media boot camp, where they’ll present their work to the media, meet government and science leaders, explain their work over a beer with strangers and try to inspire a room full of schoolkids with their science.

Last year’s Fresh Science national finalists were featured in more than 400 news stories on TV and radio, in print and online. You can stories about past Fresh Scientists at: www.freshscience.org.au

Now in its 16th year, Fresh Science is supported by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science, Research and Tertiary Education through the Inspiring Australia initiative, CSL Limited and Museum Victoria.

Ready to apply? Click through for details of how to nominate.

Growth, celebration and opportunities for students

EMBL Australia will launch a third node at the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.

And “new knowledge, ideas and a feeling of inspiration”, as EMBL Australia supports a group of PhD students to travel to the main EMBL campus in Heidelberg, Germany.

Also in this new year bulletin: more travel grants and internships for PhD students; EMBL alumni making connections with Europe; and congratulating Victoria Prize winner Terry Speed.

[Read more…] about Growth, celebration and opportunities for students

Keeping our best young bioscience brains in Australia: Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize

The winner of the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize will be announced at 12.30 pm, Thursday 15 November 2012, at a lunch at UBS in Sydney.

He will receive $25,000, and a glass trophy designed by Australian sculptor Nick Mount.

The 2012 finalists are:

  • Robert McLaughlin, a medical engineer from the University of Western Australia (UWA), who has developed an optical probe that fits inside a hypodermic needle and can help surgeons accurately determine the boundaries of breast cancer tumours.
  • Marc Pellegrini, from Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), whose discoveries about how the body regulates its immune system are being applied to clinical trials of cancer vaccines and treatments for HIV and hepatitis.
  • Jian Yang, from the Diamantina Institute at the University of Queensland, who has solved a major puzzle of missing heritability by developing software and methods to determine the multiple genes involved in conditions such as schizophrenia, obesity and diabetes.

Forever young – growing old gracefully with science

Introducing the 4th Graeme Clark Orator, speaking Wednesday 18 July 2012 at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

Professor Dame Linda Partridge imagines a future in which we all stay young by taking a pill that reduces the impact of ageing.

She’s not promising immortality, rather she’s working toward a future in which we age gracefully – healthy, happy and active until the end.

[Read more…] about Forever young – growing old gracefully with science