Sharing the science

Ever since I was a student I loved the idea of communicating complex ideas to the general public, especially kids that are yet to decide if they want to continue their education in biology. Also, I hope sharing some of the experiences of being a PhD student in Croatia might help other potential/early PhDs with navigating their career choices.

Blogs

At the project pages, I wrote my first short blog post on “Microbial jungles” of sea turtles. For the International Day of Microorganisms (marked on 17th of September) I wrote a similar piece hoping to reach more microbial enthusiasts.

For the microbiologist I wrote a short piece on “Finding resilience” as a PhD student in Croatia during the COVID pandemic and after the Zagreb earthquakes of 2022.

Workshops

My department had a tradition of celebrating biology, which grew to the celebration of all scientific fields during “Day&Night” at the Faculty of Science in Zagreb. During those events in 2019 I co-organized workshops that aimed to educate schoolchildren on marine microbes. TurtleBIOME project also got young artists to paint turtle-inspired art in real-time during the workshops.

During the European Researcher’s Night in 2019 my supervisor Sunčica and I worked with 7th grade kids on discovering the microbes from plants in their schoolyard. The kids were divided in groups and worked on a plant of their choice. They got to present their results to the general public and enjoy becoming young scientists for a couple of days.

In 2020 it was more difficult to work with the general public so my colleagues and I worked on an online workshop for the Festival of Science>.