International project to attract more young people to science and research
Who will be the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Alan Turing? Using digital technologies and social media, the SciChallenge project will create a competition to engage more European youth in the areas of natural science, technology and mathematics.
Education is key to successfully shaping the society of today and tomorrow, especially within the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, statistics show that enrolment rates in STEM-based degree programmes are decreasing. This may lead to problems not only for the industrial sector but also for research and development in a much wider perspective.
SciChallenge is the name of a new EU project that will break this trend and get young boys and girls more interested in education, research and in a career within the area of natural science and technology. The target group is youth, 10–20 years of age, and the three keywords of the project are inspire, contribute and share. A novel concept for scientific challenges for youth will be elaborated, an intuitive and multifunctional meeting place on the web will be created, and social media will be used for spreading inspiration and knowledge.
– We will use competitions as a method of getting young people to self-produce digital, scientific education material to be used by other young people. The idea is that the participants, individually or in groups, create creative, digital material such as videos, slides or infographics and share this, says Sabri Pllana who is the contact person in Sweden for SciChallenge.
The submissions are uploaded through social media channels and aggregated on the project's web platform. Winners will be appointed in a number of different categories. At the web site, participants will also find information about education, research and a career within natural science and technology, as well as opportunities regarding internships or taster days in STEM.
The SciChallenge EU project has received over Euro 1.3 million in funding from EU's Horizon 2020 program. Besides Linnaeus University, eight companies, organisations and seats of learning are part of SciChallenge, which will continue for two years until autumn 2017.
More information
Please contact Sabri Pllana, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Linnaeus University and the Swedish contact person for the project. Phone +46 (0)470-76 74 29, e-mail sabri.pllana@lnu.se.
SciChallenge's web site: www.SciChallenge.eu
Jonas Tenje, Senior Press Officer, mobile +4670-308 40 75