The international Small World Initiative (SWI) is a citizen science project to discover new antibiotics and to encourage the scientific culture, originated in 2012 at the American University of Yale. Cowdsourcing strategy is used intended to discover new antibiotics. Its aim is to bring the scientific culture and the biomedical research closer to the pre-university students in order to encourage the investigation vocation. Emulating the discover of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, involve a large group of volunteers or a community, through an open call with the aim to implicate citizenship to the expansion of scientific knowledge.

With the participation of 66 students of the Faculties of Biology and Pharmacy, 15 members of teacher staff and PAS of the University, 10 centres of high school and 15 professors of high school, has sampled in 173 points, isolating about 3.100 strains, of which 110 have antibiotic capacity against Gram bacteria, and 252 against a Gram positive.   

The closing event of the project has been today Monday 21th May at the Charles Darwin Hall of Burjassot Campus, from 9 to 13h, with the participation of Josep Lluís Ribes (general deputy director of Innovation and Educative Quality of the Valencian Government), Emili Altur (vice president of Provincial Council of Valencia), Maria Viu (city councilwoman of the City Hall Burjassot), Paz Villar (representative of the Service of Teacher Training and Educative Innovation), Carmen Bañó (dean of the Faculty of Biology) and Hortensia Rico (vice dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy). 

The project SWI@Val is in cooperation with Vice-principal of Training Policies and Educative Quality, Equality Unit, the Language Policy Service and the Unit Culture Scientific and Innovation-Chair of Science Awareness (Universitat de València). Also collaborate the Minister of Education, Research, Culture and Sports of the Valencian Government and Valencian University Consortium, BacPlant, Valgenetics and Fotocopias Burjassot.

The project SWI@València is in the programme CapSA of the Universitat de València and of the Consortium of Valencian Universities UVApS. It is endorsed of the Group of Teaching and Microbiology Dissemination Group (DDM-SEM) and the National Antibiotic Resistance Plan of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products.

The complete list of participants are on the blog of the project: www.swi.blogs.uv.es

Session programme here.