Aligning an entire country to develop an Open Science action plan - ORION Inspiring story

Taking Open Science ideas and putting them into practice is a challenge. Even at institutional level there are many different stakeholders with different motivations and challenges who need to support Open Science initiatives. At a national level, these challenges are even greater with many institutions and governing bodies needing to find common ground. The ORION partner CEITEC - the Central European Institute of Technology in the Czech Republic, set about changing the way that their institution engaged in Open Science.

What does the public expect from genome editing in life-sciences? 

On Thursday 11 March the ORION partners hosted an online event to share the findings of ORION public dialogues on genome editing with relevant stakeholders in the research community. The findings are detailed in the corresponding reports of each of the countries where the dialogues were conducted: the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Czech Republic during 2019-2020. The objective of the dialogues was to explore public attitudes towards the use of genome editing technology in fundamental life sciences research in order to inform research organisations when and how to engage the public with emerging technologies.

Gaming for change – ORION VACCINE Project

The Virtual Activity Co-Creation Initiative for Novel Engagement (VACCINE) is an ORION project that aims to create, together with young people, a digital game for engaging the public with the science behind vaccinations, infections and the immune system.  The project is managed by ORION partner the Babraham Institute, located in Cambridge, UK. Following a successful planning phase, in which 25 Year 9 pupils (aged 13-14) from a local state school were recruited, the first co-creation session was held in January 2021. 

Engaging at every level for deep institutional change - ORION Inspiring story

Embedding institutional change is a challenging process that requires buy-in from diverse groups of stakeholders. The ORION partner Instituto de Salud Carlos III in Spain had the ambitious goal of embedding Responsible Research and Innovation, RRI, right at the heart of the institution so that it would filter through into all of their research practices and projects. They realised that to implement real institutional change, they would need a founding set of guidelines and rules for how researchers were expected to implement RRI in the daily activities. 

Online education tool helped researcher apply for funding - ORION Inspiring story

Online education is now more popular and essential than ever. Students are supplementing, and during the pandemic even replacing, their in-person education with online lectures, and professionals are taking advantage of the convenience to learn new skills online. One example of an online course format is the MOOC, which stands for Massive Open Online Course and has become popular among universities that put courses online for anyone to take, free of charge.

Genigma joins NEWSERA Academic Scientists Lab

The ORION citizen science project Genigma project has been selected as part of a NEWSERA initiative to increase the uptake of citizen science projects among academic researchers across the EU. This coincides with the launch of the Genigma game app, which has been in development for two years by the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG).

Continuous support is a key to success - ORION grant supports innovative cancer research

The aim of the non-profit Czech organisation JCMM (South Moravian Centre for International Mobility) is to stimulate and support talented young people, students, fellows and teachers. Within the ORION regional call for open science projects on local societal challenges, JCMM distributed 10 grants in 2019 to master/PhD students to carry out projects containing strong elements of open science. 

Combining School Education with Scientific Practice

How much time do school pupils spend sitting each day? And if some do sit or move more than others, which are the factors that influence this? The ORION partner Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) has been investigating these questions together with pupils from German schools as part of the SMOVE - Science that makes me move - project.

Event: Co-creating ideas to improve the health of citizens in small communities

The ORION MELTIC project, coordinated by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, brings together two disciplines; health as well as information and communication technologies (ICT). The project aims to improve the quality of life of European citizens in small communities by co-creating and developing ICT health services with stakeholders including local residents. Find out more about the MELTIC project and six other health champion projects in this online workshop arranged by the Living Innovation EU project on 30 March.