Grande finale at the #Deck50 of #NHMWien. The end of #Mendel200.

Final & thank you meeting with the trainers and staff of #DECK50 at #NHMWien. We had a great time developing a year of #ScienceEngagement activities together. Philosophers + Evolutionary Biologists + SciComm-ers unite!

#evolution #philosophy #evobio #scicomm @philbio @philosophy #ecoevo #inheritance #Mendel200 #GregorMendel #INTERREG #GJM200

Just in time for our final team dinner today. Photos from the #FacultyDay at the Faculty of Life Sciences #UniVienna are now out! This is our mascot-- Mendel's Giant Pea -- sitting behind the new biology building of University of Vienna. The department moved in last year, right before our #Mendel200 project started!

UniVienna project team with #Deck50's Ines Mehu-Blantar toasting with a special #Mendel champagne made specifically for this year by colleagues in Brno! #MendelsGiantPea

Great news! Our #Mendel200 science engagement program, which incorporates #philsci #histsci #scicomm principles and #philbio ideals on #inheritance, will be part of the long-term rotation of #NHMWien #Deck50! As their 1st external partner, we set a model for other cooperations to come! #INTERREG #UniVienna #ScienceEngagement #PhilSciComm

One of our last #MeetMendel performances. This interactive theater has 2 parts: 1/ GJ #Mendel himself transported to the present day to talk about his life, work, & reactions to current genetics. 2/ The actor revealing himself as a scientist & leading an open-ended Q&A about anything genetics. A rare opportunity for mid-high schoolers to go through the emotional & rational process of science AND freely address burning questions. Something they can't do in classrooms! #Mendel200 #NHMWien #Deck50

Our final #Deck50 #NHMWien museum workshops are happening these 2 weeks, we'll be attending the #MendelGreenHouse opening Nov 12th, in addition to the other materials, we will also publish 5 #MendelStories videos, made by scicommer Maria Pinto.

Looking forward to engaging with our #ecoevo crew about bringing scientific processes & updated science in contact with the future gen, across disciplines, and to actors in different non-science sectors!

#SciComm
#ScienceEngagement
#Mendel200 10/end

In addition to the #NHMWien #Deck50 activities, we also hosted a #KLIMendelSymposium at the #KLIAustria: Mendel's Legacy in Science and Society.

Also taking an unorthodox approach, we investigate Mendel's legacy in science education & social policies as well as the way biology handles inheritance.

You can find the program here: https://www.mendel200-vienna.com/activities/mendel-symposium

Videos will be made public by the end of the year.

#Mendel200 9/n

Finally, we incorporated #philsci #histsci #scicomm principles into the design of an interactive science theater.

Mendel was brought to the Future to introduce his life & scientific training & reasoning process to the students. The #Deck50 interactive format allowed them to anchor their engagements with Mendel & trigger further Q&As. The actors, master students in genetics/neuroscience, then take their robes off and engage with them as young budding scientists (role models).

#Mendel200 7/n

So here's what we did.

We talked about #inheritance in all its messy glory instead of mere #genetic inheritance. In our #ScienceQuiz, we used the #Deck50 interactive format to create Q&As around epigenetic, microbial, ecological, Mendelian, non-Mendelian inheritance. Reinforced by a tour through #NHMWien of related cases.

We had the students stain and observe chromosomes. We tried to talk about the genome as a #ReactiveGenome to the environment, not a library of static codes.

#Mendel200 5/n

For our part, we designed 4 #ScienceEngagement projects at the Natural History Museum of Vienna. As I happened to know that a brand new science center #Deck50 opened over the pandemic, we grasped the opportunity and became the 1st externally-funded project to operate in that space.

Our final activities are ending this month! A total of 20+ school workshops with lab work, #ScienceArt games & #ScienceQuiz and ~10 #MeetMendel interactive theater performances.

#NHMWien #SciComm

#Mendel200 2/n

We are now finishing off an EU grant project Barbara Fischer & I (#EvoBio #UniVienna) won last year in collab with #MendelMuseum & Masaryk University #MUNI of #Brno for #GregorMendel's bicentennial birthday.

Our Austrian strategic partners: the #NHMWien immersive science center #Deck50 and the advanced research institute #KLIAustria, a place that fosters foundational #evobio #cogsci #sustainability research.

Website: https://www.mendel200-vienna.com/

A thread! 🧵

#INTERREG
#Mendel200
#SciComm