How do scientists tackle a surprising problem they face? You can witness this in the Science Battle competition, where researchers from the Universities of Pavia, Poitiers and Turku compete against each other. Three teams try to solve questions submitted by the public. The competition can be followed online or on site on university campuses.
Science Battle is a game-like event which shows the public in a concrete way how researchers tackle a new research question and demonstrates the process of conducting research. The game was created in 2016 at the University of Turku, Finland, and will now expand as a battle between European Campuses of City Universities (EC2U) alliance.
The first semi-final will take place on the European Researchers’ Night 24 September at 3pm CET between the Universities of Pavia (Italy), Poitiers (France), and Turku (Finland). Each of the universities has put together a team of researchers from different disciplines and at different stages of their research careers. One of the criteria for the members of the teams was also that they are not afraid to throw themselves into something new. Questions are not coming from their own field and may not be the most serious ones, but the most interesting ones, surely.
The members of the team of University of Turku are Kimmo Elo, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Parliamentary Studies, Aki Koponen, Research Director at the Center for Collaborative Research at the Turku School of Economics, Teija Koskela, University Research Fellow, Department of Teacher Education, Johanna Latva, PhD student in Ethology, Emilia Peuhu, Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Biomedicine and Veli-Matti Vesterinen, University Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry.
The public plays a major role in the implementation of the Science Battle. The first EC2UScienceBattle received dozens of questions about EC2U cities. The most favourable ones have been selected to the competition. During the competition, the audience gets to vote for their favourites, and perhaps even help the team win.
Next year, the Battle will take place between the Universities of Coimbra (Portugal), Iasi (Romania), Jena (Germany), and Salamanca (Spain). On the Researchers’ Night of 2023, the Battle will take place between the semi-final winners.
Science Battle can be followed online, a link to the programme can be found on the website utu.fi/science-battle.