24.05.2021
The Medical University of Gdańsk is one of four Polish universities which started cooperation with the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London (ICL) in the field of scientific communication. The Jagiellonian University, the Warsaw University of Technology and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań are also engaged in actions for popularization of scientific research and works’ results. In the first online meeting which took place on 18th of May 2021 took part the ICL’s Provost Professor Ian Walmsley and Stephen Webster, Ph.D., director of Science Communications Unit of the ICL. The MUG’s Rector Professor Marcin Gruchała and project’s implementers from our University: Professor Michał Markuszewski, Vice-Rector for Science and Joanna Śliwińska, Ph.D., Spokesman and Head of Communication Unit of the MUG also took part in the talks.
At the photo from left: Professor Michał Markuszewski, Professor Marcin Gruchała, Joanna Śliwińska, Ph.D.
Through the common initiatives the universities are going to promote an interdisciplinary nature of science and increase level of understanding scientists’ achievements in public dimension. Popular science podcasts with experts talking about important things in attractive, hospitable and understandable way, were also planned. First of them will be devoted to uncertainty in science. Another form of collaboration will be scientific communication workshops for academic society members. As the scientists emphasized, this dialogue is vital for forming the politics and social attitudes knowingly. According to them, scientific communication has never been as important as now.
– As with all that is best in universities, science communication is a matter of taking the imagination, and making it real – summarised S. Webster.
All Polish universities invited to cooperation are laureates of prestigious competition Excellence Initiative – Research University, while the Imperial College is one of leading universities in the Great Britain, which specializes in research and education in the fields of science, engineering and medicine. In the latest QS Worls University Rankings 2021 it occupies the 8th position on the world best universities list.