The College of Science and Engineering Science Slam is back for its fifth year! An annual competition like no other where PGRs take to the stage to present the weird and wonderful parts of their research. Who will be crowned this year’s Science Slam V champion?

What is the Science Slam?

The Science and Engineering Grad School held the first every UK Science Slam back in 2013, and it has been growing ever since. The event takes place at Cottiers in Hyndland in front of a keen audience of experts and non-experts alike.

8 brave PGRs take turns to present their research in any way they can think of, using props, audience participation, music, comedy, interpretive dance and much, much more. Once the presenting is over the audience voting begins.

The voting mirrors democracy and involves a process that could easily take an unexpected turn. The members of each table in the audience represent a voting cohort, which must form a unified voice and decide on the top 3 presenters. Choice number 1 receives 10 points, number 2 receives 7 points and choice number 3 receives 5 points. The scores are added up and a winner of a hefty-sized cash prize is announced.

How to take part

The Science and Engineering Graduate School is currently on the search for 8 new volunteers to take part in Science Slam V. The event this year will take place at Cottiers in Hyndland on Thursday 7th July 2017.

As a presenter you will have 10 minutes to present your research by any means you can think of:

‘Essentially the presenters have complete liberty to interpret the brief in any way they wish, with the only proviso that it should be accessible to a non-specialist audience’ – Heather Lambie

You will receive some expert training along the way and be in with the chance to win that coveted cash prize.

If you are a current PGR and would like to get involved you should email Heather Lambie at the Graduate School as soon as possible to sign up.

And if you don’t want to present then being an audience member with all that voting power is certainly just as exciting! Keep an eye out for information about tickets (it’s a free event but you need a ticket) coming via email from the Graduate School soon!

For top tips on what to do and what not to do during a Science Slam presentation you can find videos of all the previous shows on YouTube. You can even get some tips from the presentation of last year’s winner Shaun Skinner from the School of Engineering with his talk titled: ‘Combining evolutionary computation and experimental aerodynamics.’