• The initiative of the Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), a joint center of the CSIC and the University of Seville, is part of the XI Festival of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology ‘10alamenos9’.
• The winning ‘nano-story’ in each age category will receive a prize of 200 euros.
• Educational centers may submit their stories of a maximum of 200 words from March 16 to April 23.

The Institute of Materials Science of Seville (ICMS), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Seville (US), in collaboration with the Isla de la Cartuja Scientific Research Center (CicCartuja) and the CSIC Delegation in Andalusia and Extremadura, has promoted a new edition of the nano-story contest, an initiative aimed at inspiring young students from Andalusian secondary schools to write stories about the world of nanotechnology and nanoscience.

Under the slogan “Many stories fit in the nanoworld, tell them to us!”, ICMS has once again promoted this contest within the framework of the XI Festival of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology ‘10alamenos 9’, an initiative that encompasses various activities on this topic from different institutions, universities, foundations, companies and research centers at international and national level, and whose name refers to the unit of measurement in the world of nanotechnology, in which 10⁻⁹ refers to a size one billion times smaller than a meter.

The objective of the competition is “to awaken the interest of the educational community in the nanometric-scale world, the so-called nanoworld, which despite its tiny size is very diverse and interesting,” as stated in the rules of the call published in Divulgación ICMS and CicCartuja. Interested students may first participate in a regional phase, in which, if they are winners, they will compete in an international phase.

To participate, they must submit a written proposal in Spanish with a maximum length of 200 words and related to nanoscience and nanotechnology (information can be consulted on the Festival’s YouTube channel). In addition, the stories may belong to any genre (adventure, science fiction, fantasy, social narrative, etc.), although they must be completely original, since they may not be used in another competition nor may artificial intelligence be used for their preparation.

Likewise, participants may be students from public, state-funded or private schools located in Andalusia, who were between 14 and 17 years old as of December 31, 2025; that is, those studying 3rd and 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), 1st and 2nd year of Baccalaureate, Basic Vocational Training and Intermediate Vocational Training. In this way, there will be two categories: A (born between 2010 and 2011) and B (born between 2008 and 2009).

To participate, applicants must send their proposal in a template in Word or PDF format, together with the registration form, to with the subject “Nano-story 2026” from March 17 to April 23. In addition, they must use a pseudonym and name the document of their proposal as “Pseudonym-TitleStart”, where “TitleStart” are the first ten characters of the beginning of the title of the work, without spaces. These templates can be found on the Divulgación ICMS and CicCartuja websites.

In this regard, CSIC reminds that all works will remain in its possession and may be used for dissemination in different media, but their use will never be for profit and the authors of the selected stories, as well as their educational centers, will always be credited.

Two prizes will be awarded by ICMS and CicCartuja, each endowed with 200 €. In addition, several runner-up mentions will be awarded depending on the number of participants per category, as follows: from 22 submitted stories onwards, one runner-up mention will be awarded for each block of up to 15 additional stories. The runner-up mentions will consist of two science outreach books from the collection “Qué sabemos de…” co-published by CSIC and La Catarata. These prizes will be awarded to the educational centers of the winning participants.

With this type of initiative, ICMS continues to reinforce its commitment to the participation and organization of science outreach activities to continue encouraging scientific and technical vocations among younger generations and to increase scientific culture. This work is framed within and funded by the Excellence Plan DEEP-MaX-2024, through which ICMS has obtained the ASPIRA-MaX “Sagrario Martínez-Carrera” excellence seal and the ASPIRA-CSIC “Josefa Barba” distinction.

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