open science

Due to the success and popularity of the ORION MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from last year, an improved version of the course will run again. The ORION MOOC for Open Science in the Life Sciences 2.0 will be live from February 10th 2020. Registration is now open!

The winners of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Health Awards, organized by the ORION partner Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) has been announced. Three winning proposals from three different Spanish Health Research Institutes (IIS) have been awarded 10,000 euros each in this first edition of the RRI Health Awards, out of a total of 26 proposals received. The winning projects were Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona, the Maimonides Biomedical Research Institute of Cordoba and the Fundación Jiménez Díaz University Hospital Health Research Institute in Madrid, focus on citizen participation, science education and ethics, respectively. The call was open to Spanish Health Research Institutes that have developed significant institutional RRI activities during 2019.

September marked the official end of the ORION Open Science EU-project and the final conference was held on 27-28 September to wrap up all of the activities, insights and opinions from very fruitful 4,5 years. The aim of the ORION project has been to trigger institutional, cultural and behavioural changes in Research Funding and Performing Organisations (RFOs and RPOs) towards Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The conference provided an opportunity to review ORION’s achievements and share key lessons and experiences to help others put open science into practice too.

In order to engage the public in science and design effective citizen science projects, it is important to understand the main motivations that drive individuals to engage in research. A pan-European study by the EU ORION Open Science project has revealed gender and age differences when it comes to the reasons that motivate members of the public to get involved in life sciences research.

Our report "Public attitudes to life sciences research in six European countries" shows that interest in life sciences research is generally high among citizens and that the three most accepted purposes of using genome editing are related to the medical field. 6000 persons were interviewed in this pan-European study which was led by the ORION partners VA in Sweden and CEITEC in the Czech Republic.

That’s what we hope to find out through a series of public dialogues on genome editing in the ORION partnering countries Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and the UK. The aim with the public dialogues is to discuss the risks and opportunities of disruptive technologies and identify any concerns the public might have.

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 during 2019-2020: the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Czech Republic. 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.

Dr Luiza Bengtsson and Dr Emma Harris of the ORION Training Team together with their fellow MDC scientists Professor Uwe Ohler and Dr Philipp Boß held a citizen science session about their research topics at the re:publica conference in Berlin in May and discovered the fears and fascination sharing health data holds for the public.

At the beginning of November 2019, the Berlin Science Week connected science communities with the general public. Luiza Bengtsson and Emma Harris from the ORION Training team at Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) held an Open Science workshop and discussed "Why everyone should care about open science".

Live forever thanks to CRISPR? The artist Emilia Tikka was a guest at the Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin and her work focused on the question: What if the CRISPR-Cas9 would make us immortal? See the result in the video and visit her exhibition at STATE Studio in Berlin.