Three young researchers from UW enter FameLab Final

They had only three minutes to persuade the jury that science is their greatest passion and they are eligible for entering the final of the second edition of FameLab contest. Artur Franczuk, Magdalena Jagielska and Maciej Jasiński will be offered a chance to win the title of the best science promoter.

Each of 25 participants of FameLab semi-final - a contest addressed to scientists and researchers, over just a few minutes was supposed to tell the jury and the audience gathered in Copernicus Science Centre about their field of interest. The task was very challenging, not only due to limited time, but also because of the required style of presentation. The jury gave the highest score to attractive and comprehensive presentations, easily comprehended by non-scientists.

Among 10 finalists there are two doctoral students and one student of the University of Warsaw.

	Artur Franczuk studies biotechnology at the Faculty of Biology. He specializes in composing. On the one hand he composes genes to develop a vaccine against bacteria, and on the other hand he makes a composition of ...words - his intention is to publish fairytales for children. During his semi-final presentation he role played a jumping bacterium searching for glucose.
	Magdalena Jagielska, a doctoral student at the Institute of Social Studies and Centre for Complex Systems, in her research focuses on identifying links between social networks and strong will. Her leisure time activities include fencing and fashion designing. In her 3-minute semi-final presentation she managed to convince all the audience that eating chocolate is a better method of losing weight than eating light food.
	Maciej Jasiński, a doctoral student of the College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences of UW, who carries out research in the Centre of New Technologies Ochota University of Warsaw, is a physicist, who, in his individual very vivid manner, can talk about the construction of an ancient petrol-powered engine. During his presentation he told a story of particles of water leaning against the walls at a disco.

The final will also be entered by: Adam Gągol from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the Jagiellonian University, Grzegorz Kreiner, a globetrotter and a reader at the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, Piotr Konieczny from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of PAS in Cracow, Magdalena Richter from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of PAS in Warsaw, Marcin Stolarski from the Space Research Centre of PAS in Warsaw, Klaudia Szklamrczyk-Smolana from the Institute of Pharmacology of PAS in Cracow and Igor Zubrycki, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Electrical, Electronic, Computer and Control Engineering of Łódź University of Technology.

Who will be the winner of the second FameLab edition? - the final decision will be announced at a final gala to be held on May 11th in the Copernicus Science Centre. The Laureate will receive PLN35,000 and will be entitled to represent Poland during the international Final which is due to be held in Cheltenham in Great Britain.

FameLab is a competition joined by scientists doing their research in hard, natural, medical agricultural or technological sciences. Their task is to present scientific issues, with the time limit of 3 minutes, in the most attractive and comprehensible way so that the non science- related audience can understand them. Each contestant is allowed to use any objects and props (excluding multimedia-based tools), provided that they are able to bring them to the stage on their own. The key evaluation criteria include factual correctness, the ability to clearly explain scientific questions and an interesting way of giving the presentation.