Soapbox Science, Newcastle 17th June 2017

‌‌NUFEB sponsored Dr Luiza Lessa Andrade, from the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences to take part in Soapbox Science. Now over to Luiza to hear about her experience.

‘Soapbox Science is a public outreach platform to promote women in science. Female scientists talk about their research and interact with people of different ages and backgrounds in public areas. The idea behind is to decrease the barrier between the scientists and the general public, and to change the stereotype of scientist being a white crazy grey haired man with his tongue out. Women of different ages and from different countries also do science! The format was inspired in London Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner, which is historically an arena for public debate. Soapbox Science happens once a year in many cities in different countries, and it was the third time that it happened in Newcastle.

Priscilla Carrillo and I had a chance of engage in this event for the first time last Saturday, and we can confirm that it was a great experience. Our topic was “Microbes: why we should love them”, and we used chocolates to catch the attention of the public. Chocolates are delicious and they would not taste like that if it were not for the activity of some microbes during their production. People were surprised with that and became interested in hear where else we find microbes and what they can do for us. We talked about the role of microbes in cleaning up the environment from different pollutants, and we showed a bottle of activated sludge as an example of microbes clearing up wastewater.

It was very special to see people realising that microbes are more than tiny little germs, and that without them life as we know would not be possible. We felt like we had accomplished our task, as people asked many questions and thanked us saying that they now love microbes.’

Luiza Lessa Andrade

Last modified: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 11:29:49 BST