Science Arena
What?
In the Science Arena, you’ll be working on oceanographic research data correlated with the understanding of the ecosystem for renewable development by using your basic knowledge in biology, chemistry, and physics. A group of mentors from different science fields are designing these challenges, based on real-life problems that you’ll be facing there.
Who?
You’ll need a multidisciplinary team made up of biologists, chemists, and physicists, as well as students from similar disciplines, to successfully solve a complex task. Skills like Excel, R, and other statistics programs for data analysis are the ones that’ll help you the most at it.
Why?
If you have a scientific-educational foundation and you want to gain experience by working in a multidisciplinary team on real scientific problems that you won’t encounter at university, then this Arena is the right place for you. During these four days, you’ll have a chance to work with other young and ambitious people that share your way of thinking and have the same passion for challenges. By working in teams and having your unique approaches, you’ll be able to find solutions to the given problems. Depending on the results, you’ll be able to demonstrate your thoughts, ideas, and solutions to our jury and experts from the academy and industry.
Download the assignment 2023
Download the assignment 2022
Download the results 2019
Download the assignment 2019
Download assignment 2018
Competences
Biology
Analytical chemistry
Basics of statistics
Database search
Literature search
Critical thinking and problem solving
Teamwork
Presentation skills
Mentori
Sarena Bobana Samardžija
Bobana Samardžija trenutno radi na Odjelu za biotehnologiju Sveučilišta u Rijeci te je usredotočena na proučavanja bioloških elemenata ključnih za razvoj kroničnih mentalnih bolesti. Trenutno je student doktorskog studija “Medicinska kemija”, a prethodno je završilapreddiplomski studij “Biotehnologija i istraživanje lijekova” te diplomski studij “Istraživanje i razvoj lijekova”. Svoj istraživački rad prezentira na međunarodnim konferencijama, gdje je isti prepoznat i nagrađen titulom “Early Career Award” na 2022 Congress of the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS). Kroz studij bila je aktivan volonter na međunarodnim studentskim sportskim natjecanjima kao što su Europske sveučilišne igre u Rijeci i Zagrebu 2016, World University Championship Handball u Rijeci 2018 i EUSA EHF Beach Handball Championship u Zagrebu 2019. I sama je bila natjecatelj na STEM Gamesima gdje je u Science areni osvojila drugo mjesto 2018. godine, nakon čega se priključila organizaciji kao mentor u Science areni 2019. godine i član ocjenjivačkog žirija u 2022. godini.
Leon Halić
Leon Halić graduated at the Department of Physics at the University of Rijeka. He currently works as an assistant at Ruđer Bošković Institute and is working on his PhD in experimental particle physics. His study focuses on experimental neutrino physics, more precisely neutrino interaction cross sections and neutrino oscillations. He is a member of international neutrino experiments. In his personal time he likes to do sports, pub quizzes, and an occasional karaoke.
Katarina Mandić
Katarina Mandić is a research assistant at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) in the Laboratory of Machine Learning and Knowledge Representation. She graduated Molecular Biotechnology at the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology where she first learned about bioinformatics - a combination of biology, statistics and computer science. Afterwards, she joined a bioinformatics group at the RBI where she analyzes and visualizes large data sets from high-throughput experiments, such as genome sequencing. Besides research, Katarina is involved in science popularization and she participated at the 2022 STEM Games as a part of the mentoring team. In her free time Katarina is doing sports and she is a member of the Croatian national softball team.
Adwait Parchure
I received my bachelor's degree in biotechnology from University of Mumbai and Master's in Bioinformatics from Bangalore in India. After 4+ years of industrial and academic research experience in stem cell biology and immuno-oncology, I joined Biotechnology department at UNIRI as research assistant in January 2022. I am interested in wet lab research, specifically in drug designing. Outside work, I enjoy traveling and music.
Petra Maruševec
Petra Maruševec graduated at the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Zagreb. Her studies focused on theoretical modeling of high energy emission from extragalactic objects. She is currently employed by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb where she is a teaching assistant and is also working on her PhD in astrophysics. Her research consists of analyzing high energy observations of active galactic nuclei and contributing to the scientific activities of international collaborations such as the MAGIC collaboration. Her personal interests include biking, music and video games.