News
Preliminary Famelab round in Wageningen produces two promising winners
Two young Wageningen researchers are advancing to the national final of the Famelab storytelling contest, the regional round of which took place for the sixth time on Friday evening. The jury rated graduate student Daniel Reyes Lastiri and PhD candidate Elbrich Postma as best speakers, and PhD candidate Patrick Steinmann as a runner up. On 9 May, the two winners will compete for the national championship at Tivoli/Vredenburg in Utrecht.
The audience and the jury at De Wilde Wereld, in downtown Wageningen, heard fourteen young researchers speak for exactly three minutes about their scientific research – without the use of slides, which are quite common in scientific presentations. The jury chose Daniel Reyes Lastiri for the passion and enthusiasm with which he told about the combination of fish farming and agriculture called aquaponics, a Western term for a combination technique that has been common in Asia for years. Elbrich Postma highlighted the problem of people who can't smell or have difficulty smelling (one in six). Their lives seem to be playing out from behind a glass wall.
The jury consisted of Cathelijne Stoof (chair), professor at the Soil Geography and Landscape Group, Vincent Koperdraat, press information officer at Corporate Communications, and Wen Wu, PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Microbiology and national Famelab finalist in 2018.
The winners will compete for the national title with twelve candidates from other Dutch universities. Before the finals, they will receive a two-day communication master class at the KNAW. The winner of the national final will participate in the international final in Cheltenham, England in June.
Famelab is an initiative of the Cheltenham Science Festival and the British Council, dating back to 2005. By now, more than thirty countries are participating with an approximate total of 9000 candidates. In the Netherlands, eight universities take part in the preliminary rounds. The first preliminary round was the one in Wageningen.