Seville, 27/7/2011. The Instituto de Bioquímica Vegetal y Fotosíntesis (IBVF) has participated in the ‘Andalucía Tech’ Summer Science Campus project, an initiative of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the Ministry of Education, created with the aim of bringing science closer to students in their final years of secondary education. The activities programmed in this project include a visit to several research centres in Seville, including cicCartuja.
The visit began with the projection of an illustrative video about cicCartuja and an overview of the activities that bring together the IBVF, the Institute of Materials Sciences of Seville (ICMS) and the Institute of Chemical Research (IIQ). After the presentations, it was the turn of the hosts, Dr. Teresa Ruiz and Dr. Tomás Albi, who acted as guides and showed the visitors the laboratories and services of the IBVF. Far from the clichés associated with researchers, the latter were human and close to the students. They managed to create a spontaneous and participative atmosphere, in which the students of the Science Campus were able to give free rein to their interests. The walks from one laboratory to the next became interludes in which questions were asked: ‘At what temperature do you store liquid nitrogen?’, ‘Why do you keep Arabidopsis thaliana samples in gel?

After a brief but intense visit, the students returned to the “Andalucía Tech” Campus, where they will continue to carry out scientific activities until July 30. The balance of the days of this second edition of the Science Campus is being positive both for the organizers, for whom it is a promotion of science in an environment of cultural exchange, and for the students themselves, who see this program as an alternative to develop and share with different people other types of concerns.