OMA partners and fellows lead Marie Curie Celebrations across Europe

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Public talk by Prof. Katia Parodi, LMU Munich

The 7th November was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marie Skłodowska Curie. In order to celebrate her life and achievements, as well as the EU funding program that bears her name, researchers from three OMA partner institutions organised a simultaneous event at the University of Liverpool, CERN in Geneva, and Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Prof Carsten Welsch, Head of Physics at Liverpool, said: ”The event was a great success. We had hundreds of school children, students and researchers participate across the three sites, as well as more than half a Million people who read about the event via internet and social media on the day.”


Outreach poster session, LMU Munich

Marie Skłodowska Curie’s research and discovery of radioactivity initiated the use of radiation in cancer treatment and significantly contributed to the development of modern cancer research, which is the central interest of the OMA project. OMA is funded by the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), which provide grants to train researchers, and encourage their transnational, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary mobility. The programme honours Marie Skłodowska Curie and spreads the values she stood for.


Outreach poster by OMA Fellow, Sudharsan Srinivasan from PSI

All OMA fellows contributed to the event by presenting outreach posters in a dedicated poster session at LMU Munich. The posters presented research topics in a non-scientific way, resulting in a very interesting material which brought medical accelerators research closer to general public. The session was followed by a live-streamed talk by Prof Katia Parodi, Head of Medical Physics at LMU Munich, about the impact of MSCA on education and research in ion beam cancer therapy. A film contributed by the European Commission’s DG EAC, Martine Reicherts, provided additional background information and the view of the EU.


During the day there have been public talks and poster sessions in all three European locations. In Liverpool, more than 70 local high school students attended a series of activities at the University, including live-streamed talks and hands-on demonstrations, as well as a poster competition about Women in Science. Their activities were wrapped up with a talk about researcher’s training by Prof Welsch, who initiated and coordinated the entire event. At CERN there was a poster session presenting research and career paths of current and former MSCA fellows and a talk by Dr Marco Silari about the international impact of Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions on research at CERN.

A special motivation for organizing this celebration were several pan-European training networks, including OMA, funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants and coordinated by the University of Liverpool. But first and foremost, Marie Curie remains an inspirational figure that has paved the way for many women in science, and today, 150 years on from her birth, still continues to inspire a new generation of scientists.

More information, such as Fellows’ individual profiles and videos of all talks, can be found on the event home page: http://www.marie-curie-day-2017.org