25 High School students will interact during 16 work sessions with researchers from all the participating excellence centers offering exciting experiences that explore the biggest and the smallest scales of the universe. Coordinated from the ICN2 and the IFAE, Crazy for Physics (Bojos per la Física) also involves the UAB, the ICMAB, the ICFO, and the Alba Synchrotron.
Bojos per la ciència (Crazy for Science), a program developed by Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera that stimulates talent and techno-scientific vocations of high school students was inaugurated last week. Due to the current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic, the event was held online, nonetheless, it was a very fun, dynamic, and interactive form. On January 15th, almost 400 students, professors, researchers, and administrative collaborators got together to celebrate this opening event with magic, math, and a lot of emotions.
On the first hand, Júlia Sánchez, former participator of the Bojos per la Biomedicina (Crazy for the Biomedicine) of 2017, guided and chaired the event. She started welcoming everybody to the event, "From the global pandemic of SARS-Cov-2, we have all learned a lot, but there is one that has stood out above all: the need to have scientists prepared to deal with such a situation. Of course, we have to keep investing in science and especially in scientific training and education, so students, the message is clear: Science needs you”, she continued. Emotive videos of the new upcoming students, related to their love and passion for science were showed.
Later on, the mathematics professor and ambassador of the STEAMcat program Sergio Belmonte Palmero impressed the audience with two incredible magic tricks. For him, magic and maths are more alike than we could imagine, “Science may seem like magic”. He interacted with all the audience with a little trick, related to algorithms. Each assistant had the previous task of preparing 4 papers with words related to love. He played a magic trick and impressed everyone.
Bojos per la ciència program consists of 10 theoretical and practical courses imparted by researchers in excellence centers covering a wide range of scientific disciplines. Since 2016, the ICN2 and the IFAE successfully coordinate Bojos per la Física (Crazy for Physics), a program where students have the opportunity to learning side by side with researchers in physics, involving the UAB, the ICMAB, the ICFO, and the Alba Synchrotron. 25 students will interact, through almost 16 work sessions on Saturdays, with researchers offering exciting experiences that explore the biggest and the smallest scales of the universe. The shared objective is to offer a challenging experience for the students and give them some hints about what does being a researcher in physics means.
During this opening event, Alba Monreal, a former participant of Bojos per la Física of 2017, shared her personal experience in the program. She was glad to have had the opportunity to participate in this program, she got to meet a lot of people with her same passion and interests for Science. "You can get to know researchers and how a research center functions, it's really a paradigm shift." She kept in touch with a lot of formers Crazy for Science participants in different projects of Catalunya la Pedrera Foundation.
The ICN2 Marketing and Communication Department is coordinating the institutional participation of the ICN2 in this program. There will be 4 activities all year long, the long list of Groups that make it possible includes the Electron Microscopy Unit (Belen Ballesteros, Marcos Rosado); the Force Probe Microscopy and Surface Group (Jordi Fraxedas); the Magnetic Nanostructure group (Maria José Esplandiu); the Inorganic Nanoparticles Group (Neus Gómez Bastús, Oscar Moriones I Jana Oliveras); the Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group (Celia Fuentes Chust, Enric Calucho, Anna Puig); the Physics and Engineering of Nanodevices Group (Adriana Isabel Figueroa García); and, the Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience Group (Jose Hugo Garcia).