2023 StuFoExpo

Lights, Camera, Action! StuFoExpo meets Science Slam: clearing the stage for student research

The spotlight was shone once again raised on student research this year on October 26, when moderator Paul Druschke opened this year's Student Research Exhibition in the Dülfersaal festive hall at TU Dresden in front of 150 guests.

For the first time after a three-year digital break due to Covid, the 6th Student Research Exhibition took place on-site again. A good opportunity to develop the event concept and break new ground. The aim was to establish a creative format with an event character that would arouse curiosity and demonstrate that science can also be presented in an enjoyable way for a non-specialist audience.

Under the motto StuFoExpo meets Science Slam, this year's participants were given the opportunity to either present their research in the traditional way as a two-minute pitch and talk to the interested audience in the subsequent poster session or to choose a presentation format with an event character: The Science Slam, a creative format in which the slammers present their research results in an entertaining way.

In this way, they communicate science at eye level so that it can also be understood by the laymen audience. As part of the StuFoExpo, the students slammed for eight minutes in creative and humorous presentations about their research work and were then given the opportunity to moderate a four-minute discussion with the audience.

Science communication is not a one-way street

The event was kicked-off by a welcoming address from the Vice-Rector Academic Affairs, Prof. Dr. Michael Kobel, who expressed his enthusiasm for the commitment to student research. After all, research is a "cultural asset" and science communication is "not a one-way street, but rather a dialogue".

Science communication - what is it actually and why is it so important in a university context? These and other questions were addressed in the subsequent panel discussion between Prof. Dr. Sven Engesser (Institute of Meadia and Communication) and Prof. Dr. Simon Meier-Vieracker (Institute of German Studies and Media Cultures). The discussion explored science communication from different perspectives and also placed it in today's digital contexts.

Prepared for the field of science communication, one of the two highlights of the afternoon began with ten students and project groups pitching their research in two-minute presentations, in which they aroused the curiosity of the audience. How can parents be supported when their children have a fever or how is sustainable packaging made from edible mushrooms? These and other intriguing questions then drew the visitors to a poster session.

Following the poster session and a break with snacks and drinks, which was used for a lively exchange between all participants and guests, the second highlight of the event began the presentation of the science slams and the subsequent audience discussions. Here too, there were no limits to the thematic diversity and creative design of the five contributions. Whether it was an entire traffic light system or a fragile satellite - the participants spared no effort to present their research in the most entertaining way possible. There was no shortage of humor either and the audience giggled at the question of how best to introduce their grandma to the field of particle physics.

Jury and audience prizes

But which project was the best? This year, for the first time, five prizes were awarded, each worth €250. The golden poster, the best pitch and the best slam were chosen by an expert jury, which evaluated the participants' projects according to a points system based on previously defined criteria. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our jury of eight experts, whose professional diversity and expertise enabled an objective evaluation of the entries. A big thank you goes to:

Dr. Tilman von Strauwitz, Innovation Scout at ZEISS Innovation Hub Dresden and winner of the Georg-Helm-Prize for his outstanding dissertation "Bioprinting of functionalized bone grafts"
Dominic Dives, workshop leader at last year's StuFoExpo and lecturer for university didactics at Dresden's art and music universities
Dr. Ing. Iris Vogt, research assistant at the Institute for Building Construction at TU Dresden
Prof. Dr. Sven Engesser, Chair of Science and Technology Communication at TU Dresden
Sophie Tietze, Research Coordinator at HTW Dresden
Paula Hoffmann, student at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and one of the winners of last year's StuFoExpo 2022 with her contribution "Turbulent times in the Arctic: Flight dynamics investigation of the T-Bird towed vehicle"
Dr. Doreen Pretze, Scientific Coordinator at the Carus Teaching Center "CarL" of the Faculty of Medicine at TU Dresden
Johannes Strohhäcker, research assistant at the Chair of Electrical Railways at TU Dresden

This year, the audience was also able to award two prizes for the best science slam and the best pitch poster contributions. These were also endowed with 250€. The winners were those who received the loudest applause (the usual evaluation procedure for science slams) and live voting (for pitch and poster). In order to exclude double prizes, the winners of the jury prizes were excluded from the audience voting in prior consultation with the participants.

The winners of the StuFoExpo 2023

The jury prize for the golden poster went to Fanny Walter, Jessica Lemke and Max Mühlberg for their work on "Fever management in children".
The jury prize for the best pitch went to Alexandra Kalaitzidou, Nathalie Senechal and Paschalis Dimitriou for their work on "E-WAFE: A Full Body Embodied Social Exergame".
Lisa Marie Lehmann received the jury prize for the best science slam for her work on the topic "From a threesomeof Higgs particles to the end of the universe. Study of the tri-linear coupling of Higgs bosons using the ssWWhjj detector signature".
The audience award for the best science slam went to Benjamin Gabber for his work on "Preliminary investigation into the use of variable time-gap conditions at light-signal-regulated nodes".
The audience award for the best pitch poster presentation went to the iGEM Team 2024 with Matthias Frank, Anne-Katrin Willbrink, Johannes Radde, Caroline Breitenberger, Tobias Fietze, Mona Sabha, Lanny S. Thomas and Aleksandra Kievets for their work on "DRIP - Diatom-based Remediation via Immobilized Proteins".

The prizes were presented by the head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, Ms. Henriette Greulich, who congratulated all participants for their outstanding achievements at the 2023 StuFoExpo.

The closing words and thanks to the organizing team rounded off the exciting and informative afternoon dedicated to the spirit of student research.

We would like to thank everyone who supported this event and made it possible. In this way, we have succeeded in giving student research at TU Dresden a little more visibility and showing what outstanding achievements the students at our university are capable of.

Impressions of the StuFoExpo 2023