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Young science communicators show their mettle SAASTA has announced the winners in its Young Science Communicators Competition. The competition encourages young scientists and science students under the age of 35 to communicate their work, either through a newspaper article, a radio script or, for the first time in this round, a viral video.
The competition received a total of 60 entries from all over South Africa across the three categories. The judges applauded the enthusiasm of the entries and commented on some of the wonderful examples of imagery used for communicating complex scientific concepts. The overall winning article was a unanimous choice across the judging panel. Leon Van Eck scooped top honours for his "fascinating, accessible and entertaining" article entitled Jungle Fever: Brazil Nuts, Bees and Orchids. Morgan Trimble was the runner-up for her article Why Conserve Biodiversity? Your life could depend on it. Dane McDonald, Nikki Le Roex, Nico Chung and Michelle Robinson were commended for their efforts. Radio script In the broadcast category, entrants were required to write a script about their science for a five-minute radio broadcast. The winning entrant was Michelle Knights for her script entitled The Great Debate. Michelle is a young scientist who is making a mark in the science communication community, having also recently won the national FameLab competition. Runner-up was Bongani Thabethe for his script entitled Who could have thought there could be room at the bottom (thinking in the nanometre dimension). Melissa Boonzaaier and Morgan Trimble were commended for their efforts. Viral video This round of the competition saw the introduction of the viral video category. A viral video is a short, entertaining video, which could be spread through social media and emails. While the videos submitted were interesting, the judges felt only one video had the capacity to go viral and therefore awarded just one place - to Morgan Trimble for the video What is biodiversity? The "People's Choice" award went to Bongani Thabethe for his radio script, Who could have thought there could be room at the bottom (thinking in the nanometre dimension). The overall winner of this round of the competition was Dr Leon Van Eck from the Department of Genetics at the University of Stellenbosch. He will be attending an international science communication workshop to fine-tune his already impressive communication skills. By Joanne Riley, Science Editor, SAASTA |
