March 2024
“MCAA Annual Conference” – Milan, 14th – 16th March 2024
As a first awareness activity, immediately after the official starting of the MEDNIGHT project, Marina Trimarchi from UniME and Ricardo Dominguez from El Caleidoscopio participated to the 10th MCAA Annual Conference, held in Milan from 14th to 16th march 2024.
A booth space has been equipped with MEDNIGHT promotional materials, with the aim to involve MCAA members in the project main activities. As a matter of fact, MCAA is one of the partners of the consortium and will participate to the MEDNIGHT activities via its Chapters.
Once at the conference, we shared the space with Samira Smajlović, author of the winning poster among all those presented at the MCAA conference. In it, she unveiled two games aimed at young people under 14 and 8 years old, respectively, the premise of which was participation: they were the protagonists of the action.
The first game is similar to the “Snakes & Ladder” game, including scientific questions to be solved before rolling the dice again and changing cells. Samira presented the poster, played with children and adults and participated in the parallel session “Science Communication: Success Stories & Future Directions”.
Furthermore, Marina Trimarchi gave a brief talk about MEDNIGHT project activities during the sessione dedicated to “Citizen Science”, and, at the end of the conference, she had the honour to give the MCAA award for Social Impact.
April 2024
“MEDNIGHT Kick – Off Meeting Messina, 9th – 10th April 2024
On 9th and 10th April, the partners of the MEDNIGHT consortium met in Messina, to kick off “Mediterranean Researchers’ Night” – MEDNIGHT. During the meeting, the strategy for disseminating Mediterranean science and the geographical scope of this year’s consortium were discussed.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the shared discussion of the different transnational activities (transactivities) that make up the project’s awareness-raising strategy. The aim is to involve as many researchers as possible in activities such as “researchers at schools”, a unique opportunity to engage with pupils of all ages to raise awareness of their research and its impact on society and to put their dissemination skills into practice. On the other hand, the 5th Young Researchers at Schools International Meeting will be carried out. In this virtual meeting, young scientists will show their research work, interacting live and answering students’ questions, bringing science closer to hundreds of young people.
The MEDNIGHT team consists of Genopolys, the mixed outreach centre of the French CNRS, INSERM and the University of Montpellier, the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse (CHUT), the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), the ATHENA Information Technology Research Centre and SciCo in Greece, as well as SciCo Cyprus, the Monastir Science Palace in Tunisia, the European Women Rectors Association, the Kadir Has University in Istanbul, the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), the Museo Didáctico Interactivo de Ciencias de la Vega Baja – Jesús Carnicer (MUDIC) and El Caleidoscopio in Spain, all of them coordinated by the University of Messina in Italy.
“27th IPPOG Meeting” – Madrid, 22nd – 25th April 2024
The International Particle Physics Outreach Group members meet at the end of April at CIEMAT, Madrid, to discuss the main outreach activities performed in the participant countries.
CIEMAT, as a member of the MEDNIGHT consortium, and as organizer of the meeting, gave us a slot to discuss MEDNIGHT project with the aim to disseminate among IPPOG members Mediterranean Science.
Marina Trimarchi from UniME, as coordinator of the MEDNIGHT consortium, then illustrated to IPPOG members main activities performed during the past editions, as well as the activities programmed for the next ones. 
