Tag Archives: Dublin City of Science 2012

A tale of two cities and their science meetings: vibrant Dublin and sadsack Vancouver

I gnashed my teeth as I read Humphrey Jones’ description of the preview for the Euroscience Open Forum in Dublin, Ireland. Envy is a terrible sin but there is no other word to describe my feelings on seeing this (and more in his Jan. 26, 2012 posting on The Frog Blog,

The varied members of Ireland’s science community crammed in to the Convention Centre Dublin this morning to officially launch Dublin as the European City of Science 2012. Politicians, scientists, educators, science journalists, bloggers, policy makers and others were treated to a slick and inspiring launch, which genuinely created an air of excitement for the year ahead. [emphasis mine] The launch was MC’d by Irish comedian, TV presenter and science enthusiast Dara O’Briain (with whom I had a great chat to about science blogging and the nature of effective science programming), who spoke of his love of science and what it means for him to act as a science ambassador for Dublin City of Science 2012. He was joined on stage by Patrick Cunningham (Chief Science Advisor to the Government), Richard Bruton (Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation), Seán Sherlock (Junior Minister in the Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation), Aoibhinn Ni Shúilleabháin (Dublin City of Science 2012 Ambassador) and Andrew Montague (Lord Mayor of Dublin & former Veterinary scientist). Each spoke with passion on what the City of Science title meant to them and of the 160 events planned during the “celebration of science” to come over the next 11 months.

So what of these 160 events? …

By contrast, I offer my own experience at the recent ‘preview’ for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2012 annual meeting in Vancouver (Canada) next month.

To give you a sense of the magnitude of this event from a Canadian perspective (if you don’t already know), it’s helpful to know that there are no major Canadawide meetings for scientists outside their respective specialties. The last time we had this kind of general meeting was 30 years ago (and that too was a AAAS annual meeting) in Toronto.  Here’s my description of the launch for the 2012 meeting exactly one week ago today (Jan. 19, 2012 posting),

The preview was well organized and proceeded quite smoothly although I’m not sure about its actual purpose. Generally, a press conference of this type is called to generate excitement and interest. …

There were a few moments in the preview where excitement and interest threatened to make an appearance. Julio Montaner, Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, and Karen Bakker, a Canada Research Chair in Political Ecology at the University of  British Columbia, spoke with passion and fervour about their areas of expertise and for a few moments the room buzzed quietly. …

Otherwise, the preview was a bit lacklustre.

The organizers didn’t give me much to work with. I can’t fathom why the organizers, particularly the Vancouver committee,  gave up an opportunity to reach beyond the scientists, science journalists, and science enthusiasts to create some excitement about science in Canada and about science in Vancouver.

I cannot imagine a greater contrast between two press conferences launching science events. Bravo to the Irish!

I have mentioned The Frog Blog before but here’s a quick refresher anyway (from The Frog Blog About page)

The Frog Blog is a website created by Humphrey Jones and Jeremy Stone, science teachers of St. Columba’s College, Dublin, Ireland. It aims to provide an online tool for the promotion of science within our school, and across the country. While it is designed for the pupils of St. Columba’s, we hope it has wide appeal

 

International art/science script competition ceremony will be hosted by Trinity College Dublin’s nano centre and STAGE

CRANN (Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices) at Trinity College Dublin has announced that it will be co-hosting the winner’s ceremony (and a reading of the winning script) for an international scriptwriting contest featuring science- and technology-inspired plays. From the Jan. 11, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

CRANN, the SFI [Science Foundation of Ireland] funded nanoscience centre based at Trinity College Dublin, today announced that it is bringing the STAGE International Script Competition to Ireland during Dublin City of Science 2012. The competition judges will include a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Nobel Laureate.

The STAGE International Script Competition is a unique collaboration between art and science that awards a prize of $10,000 for the best new play about science and technology. STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – began as an alliance between the Professional Artists Lab, a dynamic artistic laboratory, and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Through CRANN’s relationship with CNSI, Dublin has beaten off stiff international competition to bring STAGE to Ireland.

As the 2012 City of Science, Dublin will host a programme of science-related events and activities throughout the year. The city will host Europe’s largest science conference, the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) 2012 from July 11-15, 2012, at which the winner of the 5th STAGE International Script Competition will first be announced to the public.

Later in the year, STAGE and CRANN will collaboratively host the award ceremony, at which the winning playwright will receive their STAGE Award from a science Nobel Laureate. In tandem with the ceremony, there will be a staged reading of the winning play, performed by professional Irish actors. Nancy Kawalek, Founder/Director of STAGE, will direct the reading.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for interested parties to submit their plays for this cycle (the 5th); submissions were closed as of Dec. 1, 2011.

The competition certainly seems to have attracted some high profile interest in past years (from the news item on Nanowerk),

Each cycle, the winner of the STAGE International Script Competition is chosen by a stellar panel of judges. Judges for the last cycle were Pulitzer Prize and Tony-Award winning playwright David Auburn; Tony, Olivier, and Obie Award-winning playwright John Guare; Nobel Laureate Alan Heeger; Nobel Laureate and KBE Sir Anthony Leggett; and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. In addition to Mr. Lindsay-Abaire, who has shown his support for STAGE by signing on as a judge ‘in perpetuity’, the judges for this 5th cycle of the competition will include two science Nobel Laureates and two additional distinguished writer-artists from the theatre world. The names of these jurors will be announced in early 2012.

The 3rd cycle winner was a play about Rosalind Franklin; I’ve long been interested in her story and  I mentioned it in a July 28, 2010 post about science-inspired knitting (there’s a ‘Rosalind’ scarf),

For anyone not familiar with Franklin (from the San Diego Super Computer Center at the University of Southern California web page),

There is probably no other woman scientist with as much controversy surrounding her life and work as Rosalind Franklin. Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. The story of DNA is a tale of competition and intrigue, told one way in James Watson’s book The Double Helix, and quite another in Anne Sayre’s study, Rosalind Franklin and DNA. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize for the double-helix model of DNA in 1962, four years after Franklin’s death at age 37 from ovarian cancer.

Here’s a bit more about the 3rd cycle STAGE winner, Photograph 51, from the news item on Nanowerk,

A film version of third STAGE Competition winner Photograph 51 is being produced by Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Academy Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz, and Ari Handel. Playwright Anna Ziegler will adapt her play for the screen. Photograph 51 was featured at the 2011 World Science Festival in New York City; the play has also enjoyed prestigious productions in New York City and Washington, D.C.

 

About the Play: What does a woman have to do to succeed in the world of science? It is 1953 and Dr. Rosalind Franklin, brilliant, passionate and ambitious, pours herself into her work at King’s College Lab in London. When fellow scientists Watson and Crick find out about her discoveries in the field of DNA, her work is suddenly not her own – and shortly thereafter they claim credit for a major breakthrough. A compelling drama about a woman’s sacrifice for professional success, Photograph 51 asks how we become who we become, and whether we have any power to change.

I checked the playwright’s, Anna Ziegler, website for more information about the upcoming movie and found this,

Anna has been awarded [April 2011] a Tribeca Film Festival / Sloan Grant to adapt her play PHOTOGRAPH 51 into a film. Rachel Weisz, Ari Handel, Audrey Rosenberg and Darren Aronofsky are producers.

You can find out more about STAGE and other winners of the competition here.

Travel grant to Euroscience Open Forum 2012

Dublin (Ireland) will be the City of Science for 2012 (as per my April 29, 2011 posting) and, as part of the festivities, will be hosting the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) in July. From the Dublin City of Science 2012 page about the travel grants to attend ESOF,

Created by Euroscience, ESOF – Euroscience Open Forum – is the biennial pan-European meeting dedicated to scientific research and innovation. At ESOF meetings leading scientists, researchers, young researchers, journalists, business people, entrepreneurs and innovators, policy makers, science and technology communicators and the general public from all over the world discuss new discoveries and debate the direction that research is taking in the sciences, humanities and social sciences.

If I read the details correctly, you can be reimbursed for up to 750 euros if your application is successful. From the travel grants page,

Journalists irrespective of their nationalities and of their media (paper, radio, TV, web). Media accreditation will be required.

The Selection Committee is:
•    Philip Campbell, (Editor at Nature Publishing Group)
•    Gail Cardew,  (Chair of the ESOF Supervisory Board)
•    Ruth Francis, (Head of Press at Nature Publishing Group)
•    Carl Johan Sundberg, (Euroscience Vice-President)

The eligibility criteria will mainly be based on the CV assessment and the applicant’s motivation statement in attending ESOF2012.

An email of decision will be sent to all candidates stating whether or not their application has been selected and whether they have secured a grant. (February 2012)

The deadline is Jan. 31, 2012. Go here to submit an application (you will have to register for an account as ESOF if you haven’t already). Good luck!

Art of Science in Dublin

An Irish hit musical inspired by Schrödinger? As Dublin gears up to for its 2012 City of Science experience (mentioned in my April 29, 2011 posting), it seems that various organizations are hosting events in preparation. The Dublin Contemporary 2011 organization is hosting The Art of Science event on Oct. 20, 2011 at 7 pm. From the Art of Science webpage,

The Art of Science: How Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger’s time in Dublin influenced Rough Magic’s Musical “Improbable Frequency” and other probabilities

7PM
RSVP to dc2011events@gmail.com

Erwin Schrödinger came to Dublin in 1939 as first Professor of Theoretical Physics in the newly constituted Dublin Institute for Advanced Study. By this stage he had completed his primary work on quantum physics, including the eponymous Schrödinger Wave Equation and the “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought-experiment, an illustration of the paradox arising when quantum concepts meet human (or feline) reality. Probably (a risky choice of word here) the most significant contribution from his time in Dublin is the 3 lecture series “What is Life”? Professor of Physics at Trinity College Dublin, Iggy McGovern discusses the significant years that Schrödinger spent living in Dublin.

If the first half of the 20th century was the era of physics, then the second half would be the era of biology – thanks largely to Schrödinger’s book,  ‘What is Life?’ Mary Mulvihill takes a whirlwind look at some of the key developments in the world of science in the 20th century, and examines our changing public perceptions of science and technology.

How did Schrödinger end up being the inspiration for the hit Irish musical “ Improbable Frequency” ? Lynne Parker, Artistic Director of Rough Magic questions the great divide between Art & Science and Arthur Riordan expands on how the famous physicist came to appear in his musical “Improbable Frequency”.

You can read more about the speakers on the Art of Science page and here are a few snippets from the musical,

Dublin’s beautiful elements

Trinity College’s Science Gallery launched an exhibit celebrating the Periodic Table of Elements and the International Year of Chemistry, Elements, on July 15, 2011. The exhibit will be open until September 23, 2011.

GrrlScientist in her August 8, 2011 posting on the Guardian science blogs waxes rhapsodic about the exhibit [ETA Aug. 12, 2011: This is not a review of the exhibit. GrrlScientist notes elsewhere in her post that she has not yet been able to view it. Thank you to Michael Flynn for emphasizing that point. I should have been clearer about it.],

What does an invisible (lead) man, a (dead) man and a revigitator [sic] have in common? POISON? No … They all make an appearance at the hot new ‘Elements’ exhibition that’s on right now at Trinity College Dublin’s Science Gallery in Ireland!

One thing that I especially love about this exhibition (from just watching the videos) is the crowd-sourced periodic table, which the Gallery is building now.

You can see what she means,

I last mentioned Dublin in my April 29, 2011 posting about the city’s upcoming status as Europe’s City of Science 2012 and its self-organized celebration, Dublin City of Science 2012.