UOC takes part in European Researchers' Night award-winning project

The European Researchers' Night, funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), is a Europe-wide public event that brings researchers closer to civil society. The Night provides researchers the opportunity to showcase the diversity of science and its impact on citizens’ daily lives, and to stimulate interest in research careers – especially among young people. The events highlight how researchers contribute to our society by displaying their work in an interactive and engaging forum.

The Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus developed a novel methodology especially designed to boost multi-disciplinary R+D+i processes and to catalyse the knowledge transfer to civil society. Over the next six months, five multidisciplinary research partners will organize the events scheduled in Badalona in September 2021 under this methodology.The partners are the Institute of Neurosciences of the Universitat de Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), and the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (CNRS, ILCB, and Aix-Marseille University), which bring expertise in such diverse fields as cognitive neuroscience, health, linguistics, climate emergency, translation and philosophy.

The European Performing Science Night (EPNS) will in itself be a scientific event, where research groups will deploy experiments with a broad spectrum of civil society - both online and face-to-face. Audiences will perform, in creative terms, fostering an understanding of the research impact on citizens’ daily lives, and encouraging young people to embark on research careers. The project will demonstrate the value of EU investment on EU research, based on EU diversity and the wealth of approaches and languages across communities.

Researchers at the Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA Lab), part of the UOC's Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), will play a dual role in the European Performing Science Night (EPSN) project.  As well as helping to define scientific challenges – including, if necessary, a challenge linked to the climate emergency and cities – they will also be in charge of assessing the impact of the science communication performances created.

An open call for creative agents, technologists and scientists to help us in the project development, has just been launched.

This research contributes to achieving sustainable development goals (SDG) numbers 9, "Industry, innovation and infrastructure", 11, "Susatainable cities and communitires" and 13 "Climate action".

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101036143.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century, by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health. Over 500 researchers and 51 research groups work among the University's seven faculties and two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and open knowledge serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu. #UOC25years