Outreach activities

Meet the Scientist: “Going underground - cleaning up pollution"

London, 12 March 2015

This event was organised by CL:AIRE and the ADVOCATE Network together with the Society of Spanish Researchers. It took place in an English pub, so the audience could enjoy a drink while Gabriela Kakonyi, Petra Hedbavna and Natalia Fernández gave an overview of their work within the ADVOCATE Project

Gabriela talked about the management of the project and the training network and Petra and Natalia focused their talks on their specific research topics. Petra explained how bacteria batteries work and the role they play in contaminated groundwater remediation, while Natalia showed us how we can characterise a contaminated site using geophysics.

Around 20 people enjoyed chatting about in-situ remediation and continued with further discussions on the topic from different points of view during the dinner.

The event was live-streamed by the SRUK-CERU Youtube channel. You can view the video here.

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Visit to the University of Lille to promote ADVOCATE research

University of Lille, France, November 2014

Vidhya Chittor Viswanathan and Alice Badin from ADVOCATE project, together with Ivan Sánchez, University of Granada and Pierre-Jean Superville, a researcher from the ENSCL, visited the University of Lille in France with an aim to to share their research with students and to show them a fresh vision about R&D.

They gave a great presentation about their research fields to students in their 4th and 5th years in the Engineering School, followed by another at the LASIR lab at the University of Lille which focused on metal contamination in rivers and sediments.

They introduced the students to environmental chemistry and its various applications. This introduction was then followed by a brief presentation of their individual research projects that dealt with different domains within the field of environmental chemistry. The final part of their presentation included an overview of the various career possibilities to be pursued in environmental chemistry.

In conclusion, they got positive feedback from an evaluation questionnaire which reflected the student’s broad interest in their work. Their presentations were commended for being very accessible and relevant.

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Native Scientist Project

Sara Bonell School (London, UK)

Our first outreach event was thanks to the School Project and the Native Scientist Project collaboration. The goal was to get bilingual scientists interacting with bilingual children in their home language, with the aim to create science awareness and strengthen children's academic achievement.

This event was the first one carried out in Spanish. Ruth García, person responsible for the Work Package "Knowledge Transfer and Outreach Activities", tried to explain what a knowledge transfer manager means and how important their role is in society. By doing this we were able to bring role models to these children, while enhancing their bilingual and science skills.

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3^rd Science Week

“Vicente Cañada Blanch” (London, UK), May 2014

Our fellow Ruth García de la Calle, responsible for Work Package “Knowledge transfer and outreach activities” developed several activities with students from secondary school (12 years old).

Ruth Garcia gave a short presentation about the existing environment-related problems with industrial activities and their consequence on the land and groundwater. She then carried out different activities aiming give a feeling about how water flows in the ground; the quality of drinkable water and the consequence of our actions when pollutants are spilling into the soil. All activities were carried out in groups with a maximum of ten students.