News 2013
Fergus McAuliffe is World Champion
BEES postgraduate researcher Fergus McAuliffe is now a world champion science communicator after winning the Famelab international grand final last weekend.
BEES postgraduate researcher Fergus McAuliffe is now a world champion science communicator after winning the Famelab international grand final last weekend.
Famelab is a science communication competition which is run worldwide in conjunction with the British Council and NASA. It culminates in a final at the Cheltenham Science Festival. The competition involves competitors communicating a scientific topic in just three minutes without the aid of slides.
Fergus won the international competition - made up of 23 countries- after winning the national competition held in April and supported by Newstalk. This is the first year Ireland has entered the competition.
The subject of Fergus' talk was the strange physiology of the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) which has the capacity to freeze solid over Winter while remaining alive and capable of 'defrosting' and continuing its lifecycle in Spring.
Pursuing a PhD at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) at UCC, Fergus is a previous winner of the HEA/Irish Independent 'Making an Impact' competition and the UCC 'Science for All' competition.
Speaking from Cheltenham, Fergus said he was thrilled with his win: "I'm delighted with how the competition worked out. The standard was so high in the semi-final and even higher in the final. The judges' decisions must have been very difficult”.
“Famelab has been a great experience and hopefully will kick on in Ireland, and Cork, next year. Huge thanks to all those who helped in the preparation of my talks and provided feedback, especially my friends and colleagues in BEES!"
Congratulating Fergus, Prof. John O’Halloran, Head of the School of BEES, UCC, described him as a very talented researcher and an outstanding role model for those involved in science communication.
“In our knowledge based society, where significant public funds are being used to support research, it is great to see that Irish post graduates not only compete, but can win global competitions", said Prof. O’Halloran.
“We are very proud of him and wish him continued success as the public understanding of research is not only desirable, but critical in building a knowledge based society”.
Fergus' own research looks at using plants to deal with wastewater from Irish homes using willow trees. He is supervised by Dr. Padraig Whelan and Prof. Peter Jones.
"We're all incredibly proud of Fergus", said Prof. Peter Jones, Head of Plant Science at BEES. "He is a wonderful science communicator and that has now been recognised on a World stage. Good communication skills are actively encouraged amongst all our students at BEES and it’s great to see Fergus represent that internationally".
>>Watch Fergus' talk here>>