While we were in Edinburgh, looking at museums and drinking Ginger beer, our supervisors sent out information regarding our student exhibition. There were three monumental things we learned in this singular email: (1) that our goal was to “hack” into an existing exhibition in Gothenburg and analyze their resources from a ‘different’ perspective, (2) that the exhibition was to take place in 3 local museums in only 7 weeks (holy shit), and (3) that I was elected project leader for programming and education. The last one came as a total surprise.
It’s almost ironic that once the real work starts in this course, I find myself the most distracted I’ve ever been. The International Science Festival in Gothenburg has begun to permeate the city with many public science events. As I mentioned before, the Science Festival has been a huge interest of mine for some months and upon learning it’s major theme—Creativity—it’s no surprise that my team didn’t accomplish much while I was buzzing around.
Doing the “Scientist Roulette” event actually took a bit of effort for me; it was definitely one of the wackiest teaching experiences I have ever had. This gig was an attempt for the festival staff to better link the Gothenburg with their local scientists and researchers. Fifty different scientists and researchers were put in a car of popular Gothenburg Ferris wheel for two hours and joined by the public. When I signed up, I knew I was going to represent my Swedish lab (Göteborgs Universitets Department i Mikrobiologi) but what I was to present about cellular biology in this context was beyond me. I had a small amount of room, 10 minutes per session, and no idea if my audience would speak English. It had to be fast, easy to understand, and (to my preference) hands-on.
In the end, I chose to actually talk about my current research about stress granules. After a brainstorming beer with Annika outside Pustervik, I came up with the following, participatory exhibit scheme which I think Nina Simon herself would be proud:
Using pipecleaners, I was going to have my visitors make my Ferris wheel car into a model cell---complete with personalized stress granules. In cellular biology, stress granules are little "granules" of RNA and protein molecules that accumulate when the cell feels stress, whether it's environmental or internal. By sequestering these molecules, the cell can focus on what needs to happen when stressed: putting energy to other processes, harboring bad molecules, etc. 
In my presentation, I had visitors make their own stress granules based on what they thought they forgot about when stressed. Colors represented "family," "eating," "work," etc. and visitors could self-evaluate and construct their own. By the end of the presentation, I had a Ferris wheel car filled with stress granules: it was awesome. Needless to say, I was very excited. :)
The other highlight of the Science Festival was my admittance to the EUSCEA Annual Conference as a volunteer intern. I owe it's main coordinator, Jan Riise, an immense thank you, as he essentially made me a guest with all the benefits of any other conference member. As a result, I got the amazing opportunity to sit in on lectures from directors of science festivals all around the world. I met Ben Wiehe, director of the science festival in Cambridge, Massachusetts (one of the oldest in the States; super nice guy, we talked together often as we had much in common), as well as Simon Gage of the Edinburgh science festival (oldest in Europe; busy man, but gave me much career advice). Lectures included everything from sponsor and stakeholder strategies to international mass experiments to political consciousness. As it was international, we also got a very holistic perspective of what each country was doing and addressing within each of its events. To cap it all off, Jan even invited me to the conference main dinner, which was held late at night in a candle-lit Fiskkyrkan and was the biggest and best smorgåsbord of Swedish seafood I had ever had. It was a superb learning experience, one where I met some brilliant and inspiring thinkers.
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