Outreach Events

Every July EMBL hosts a visit from the International Summer Science School Heidelberg (ISH) group. This year, it was already the 13th edition of this very successful programme, organised by the city of Heidelberg and inspired by the summer school programme of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

The city of Heidelberg invites a group of around 10-12 pre-college students from Heidelberg's twin towns (Bautzen, Cambridge, Jablonec, Kumamoto, Montpellier, Rehovot and Simferopol) to experience an one-month research training at various distinguished scientific institutions in Heidelberg. As the students possess diverse backgrounds, the first week of the programme is aimed at providing a common scientific ground before they move on to their practical placements. In addition, the programme gives the students the possibility to discover the Heidelberg area and get insights into its history and culture, through different tours and activities.

The 3-day visit at EMBL is included in the introductory week. Since 2007, a group of local Heidelberg students has been joining the ISH group. This year, the "locals" came from the Bunsen-Gymnasium, the Hölderlin-Gymnasium and the St. Raphael-Gymnasium Heidelberg. Another student from Cambridge, who was particularly interested in biological sciences, also joined the ISH group for the visit to EMBL.

As in previous visits, ELLS designed a multidisciplinary programme that would potentially please students who aim to follow careers in diverse scientific areas (biology, physics or chemistry). This year, the programme was built around modules focusing on developmental biology, structural biology, biophysics and gene expression analysis. Each module included scientific seminars by EMBL scientists, tours to related EMBL facilities, hands-on experiments and didactic games.

The 2009 ISH group was very dynamic and they used the opportunity to ask many questions to the EMBL scientists. The ELLS team and the EMBL scientists enjoyed very much interacting with the group and guiding them through the different activities.

Following a quiz including questions on the different activities performed, the students received a key to the 'EMBL treasure'. They couldn't wait to open the box and were happy to find a combination of useful handouts on career development aspects and EMBL publicity material to take home. We couldn't have found a better group of ambassadors for the "EMBL culture"!

On the last day of the visit, the group watched one of the brand-new Insight Lectures, which was produced as part of the SET-Routes project (www.set-routes.org). They followed the presentation by a very successful and enthusiastic scientist working on the construction of satellites for monitoring climate change. Thereby, the students could not only gain insight into this specific area of science but also learned how a scientific career develops over time. This was followed by an informal careers panel involving EMBL scientists from different areas of research and at different stages of their careers. The lively discussion on various aspects of scientists lives and on career perspectives went on as everyone involved in the programme joined for a final ice-cream and soft drinks gathering.

Good-bye ISH 2009 group! All the best in your studies and in your future projects! Many thanks to the EMBL scientists involved! Thanks to the city of Heidelberg team who manages the ISH programme! We are looking forward to the next edition in July 2010!

Official website of the International Summer Science School Heidelberg

SET-Routes Insight Lectures