WIT Press Release
Title: WIT Duo Shortlisted for Prestigious EU Decartes Prize for Excellence in Science Communication
Release date: Fri, Dec 15, 2006
Two lecturers from Waterford IT, Dr Sheila Donegan and Eoin Gill have been shortlisted for a Descartes Prize for Excellence in Science Communication 2006 putting them in the company of world-class science communicators such as Bill Bryson, winner in 2005 for his best selling book "A Short History of Nearly Everything". The pair run CALMAST the Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology, at Waterford Institute of Technology. CALMAST activities involve over 10,000 young people in the Southeast in its activities every year.
Donegan and Gill are first Irish science communicators to be nominated for these awards and are shortlisted in the category of "popularizing science through the written word" for writing Eureka, a weekly science magazine for primary school children, in 2004 /05. Gill and Donegan developed and wrote Eureka for its first year.
Eureka is a glossy four-page weekly magazine for children published by the Irish Independent with a different theme every week, allowing various disciplines of science to be included and allowing it to include topical science issues in the media explained for children. Eureka also has activities and experiments that can be performed in the classroom or at home using common inexpensive materials. Eureka has also previously won the World Association of Newspapers Young Reader Award in 2005.
The aim of the Descartes Prize for Excellence in Science Communication, created by the European Commission, is to improve the quality of science communication towards the general public. It targets organisations or individuals having achieved outstanding results in science communication. To ensure only the 'best of the best' compete for the European prize, the laureates are selected from among winners of existing local, regional and national science communication prizes and festivals, of varying size.
Prior to this nomination, Gill and Donegan were awarded a Waterford Crystal Gal Greine prize for Science Communication, which enabled the nomination for the Descartes Prize.
In their category of Promotion of Science through the written word there were 20 nominations from all over Europe and a shortlist of 7 has been selected. The winners in each category will be announced at a Descartes award ceremony in Brussels in March.
Speaking about the nomination, Eoin Gill, Director, CALMAST, said: "The Descartes Prizes are the European Union’s highest awards for outstanding transnational scientific research and science communication and this is a highly prestigious nomination for CALMAST and WIT". Co-director, Sheila Donegan added "We were pleased that we were nominated and now we are really thrilled to be short-listed, however the calibre of these awards and nominees is so high and this is evident from previous winners alone, such as Bill Bryson and Lord Robert Winston."
Gill added "We run many events and projects where our main objective is to excite young people about the world they live in and make them inquisitive about discovering and experimenting with science in their lives on a daily basis. This is what guided us when developing Eureka. A public awareness of science is very important for the future of Ireland and the European Union because, not only are our economies dependent on science and engineering, but our children are growing up in a world that is being shaped by science and technology. So, to be involved at this final stage in the Descartes Awards for the achievement of promoting Science through the written word is a wonderful honour for us and a first for Ireland."
