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Past Fresh Scientists
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Serving fresh Australian science to the world GeneBalls, microwaving wood, measuring pain, plankton poo and trigger plants that catapult pollen onto their insect visitors – these are the topics of just some of the tales told to the world by Australia’s Fresh Scientists during National Science Week 2004. Their stories were presented to the public in Australia by ABC and commercial TV News, by national and regional newspapers – from The Age, The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times, to Queensland Country Life and the Preston Post Times. Their stories were retold around the world by Radio Australia and international science writers. In all, over 174 reports have been picked up to date by our monitoring, including 40 international stories. Now in its seventh year, Fresh Science selected 16 of Australia’s brightest and best young scientists from 62 candidates nominated by universities, research institutes, professional organisations, CSIRO, and private companies. During National Science Week, the Fresh Scientists were flown to Melbourne for a day of media training, then asked to talk about their research in non-scientific terms before the national and international media and the general public. Each Fresh Scientist made at least two short, punchy presentations, one to a University audience (Melbourne and Monash) and another to a school or general public audience. They also composed a verse – limerick or haiku – for an audience of scientists and the media at a dinner and took part in an informal panel discussion session of Fresh Science @ The Redback. They each wrote a press release with the assistance of a science communicator which was then distributed to science writers and general media in the weeks following the event. Mark Hutchinson won the 2004 British Council Australia Fresh Science Prize for his work on whether our immune system controls how we feel pain. The people’s prize, voted
for by the Fresh Scientists themselves, went to Chris Clemente who has won the
2004 ABC Fresh Science Fellowship. Chris studies lizard locomotion and how it
affects the predator-prey relationship. Several of the Fresh Scientists have had approaches from potential commercial or research partners as a result of their Fresh Science exposure. Fresh Science has now trained over 100 of Australia’s up and coming scientists. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of a National Science Week grant from the National Innovation Awareness Strategy of the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training; a grant from the Science, Technology and Innovation Initiative of the Victorian Government; sponsorship from the British Council; support from ABC Science, New Scientist and the State Library of Victoria.
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Media contacts:
Niall Byrne 0417 131 977 and Sarah Brooker 0413 332 489
Fresh Science is managed by Science in Public and ASN Events
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