The UniStem Day, an educational scientific event aimed at high school students, is spreading across Europe – since its 2009 beginning in Milan, the event has expanded to 34 Italian universities and for the first time this year it extended beyond Italy to involve six other universities in Spain and one in the United Kingdom. The plan for next year is to recruit even more participants. As representatives from the Linnaeus Center in Developmental Biology for Regenerative Medicine (DBRM) Network at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, Giulia Gaudenzi and Iskra Pollak Dorocic joined this year’s event in Milan and picked up some behind the scenes tips.
The UniStem Day in Milan: Giulia and Iskra's experience
Elena Cattaneo, co-founder of the event, and her lab welcomed us during the busy last moments before the big day. We asked Elena about her goals of organizing such an ambitious event and its expansion throughout Europe:
“I think this is a great European achievement. I view the UniStem Day as a day we dedicate to the students on the subject of stem cell research, but also it is a day for us as scientists to develop our thoughts and make our experiments even better.”
On the morning of 15th March, the historical University of Milan lecture theatre was packed with more than 700 high school students excitedly waiting for the start of the activities. An enthusiastic Elena Cattaneo started off the day with an inspiring welcome talk. To showcase the true Europe-wide scope of the day, a live conference call with several other universities hosting the event simultaneously in other Italian cities and in Barcelona followed. The rest of the morning session was filled with scientific lectures incorporating different topics and applications of stem cell research. It was clear the students were well prepared for the lectures ranging from basic stem cell science to applications such as using stem cells to repair damaged cornea, as well as ethical discussions and a special performance by the famous Italian actor Marco Paolini. The crowd was particularly captivated by the commemoration of Nobel-Prize-winning Italian neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who this year’s event was dedicated to. During the break we asked the students about their thoughts on the day.
“Everything I saw today was very interesting and very important, I especially like the video they showed during the morning with Rita Levi Montalcini describing to young students how is it to be a scientist”, said 17-year old Francesca.
“I liked that there were live exchanges with all other universities during the day, it was nice to hear them”, added her classmate Giada.
In the afternoon the biomedical laboratories of the University of Milan were open to the high school students, providing an opportunity to explore the lab benches, cell culture rooms and microscopy facilities under guidance of young scientists. Andrea, a student attending the lab tour remarked,
“This is the first time I’m visiting a university lab. It is very interesting, especially after the lectures in the morning, to see things in practice. I like the microscopy part.”
The day ended with the happy students enjoying some Italian ice cream and chatting with the graduate students and researchers. No doubt, the UniStem Day is achieving its goal of bringing scientific awareness and education about stem cell research to the young generation. Despite the complex topic and high level of scientific discussion, the students were actively participating, asking lots of questions, and enjoyed the unique opportunity of having scientists take time to speak to them and spread their enthusiasm for science. We could not help but think how we would have enjoyed such an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research and meet working scientists as high school students ourselves.
While Giulia and Iskra were experiencing the UniStem Day in Milan, a team of researchers and science communicators at the University of Edinburgh's MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine were participatingin the pan-European event by welcoming almost 50 high school and college students into the Centre. The students watched the EuroStemCell film, Stem cells - the future: an introduction to iPS cells, heard lectures from scientists at the centre, went on a tour of the laboratories and had a series of interactive tutorials which introduced them to all aspects of the journey from basic stem cell concepts to the development of new treatments. They even had the opportunity to visit the clinical research facility in the neighbouring hospital and meet the clinical nurses who work with Edinburgh biologists to develop and deliver clinical trials of potential new therapies.
The UniStem Day was supported by the EU Framework 7 funded research consortia NeuroStemCell, OptiStem and EuroStemCell.
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