Mednight 2020 is a project in which the main research centres and universities in Valencia and Murcia take part and which aims to make the figure of women in research visible and bring science closer to society, and which has organised more than a hundred activities.

Dolors Corella, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the UV, Rei Jaume I Award for Medical Research 2018, and resercher at CIBEROBN, will give a lecture on Friday 27 at 7 pm: Omics and health, an increasingly important relationship.

Past acts

There are several events organised by the University of Valencia in the framework of the Mediterranean Researchers’ Night-Mednight 2020 that have taken place.

Thursday 26 at 6.30 pm, Science Dialogues: Female researchers at the UV has been an activity through the Blackboard platform where seven women scientists has participated. They are Anabel Forte (Department of Statistics and Operations Research); Ana Isabel Marrades, director of the Chair of Feminist Economics at the UV; Lucía Hipólito (Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology and Parasitology); Pilar Serra (Physiotherapy); Mónica Bolufer (Modern and Contemporary History), Amparo Alonso Sanz (Didactics of Musical, Plastic and Corporal Expression); and Carmen Bevià (Fundamentals of the Economic Analysis of the University of Alicante), regional secretary of Universities and Investigation of the Valencian Government.

On Thursday morning, at 10.30 am, the scientific culture units of the universities of Valencia and the Polytechnic University of Cartagena has been presented VR Cinema Experience, a virtual activity to make virtual reality known from an immersive point of view. The event, within the Future and also Pioneer Female Scientists spaces, vindicates virtual cinema as a way of involving the public in its dissemination. On Friday 27, from 9 a.m. to noon, there will be another instalment of this activity.

On Wednesday 25 the video How can we know cellular toxicity, by Anna Juan, professor of Toxicology at the University of Valencia, has been released, where she analysed cell viability with the MTT trial.

Visual Mednight, a dissemination project that will bring together the science findings of the universities of Murcia and Valencia, was be released on Tuesday 24. Through infographics, as attractive scientific pills, we will talk about history and heritage, life and health, sea and pollution, geography and biodiversity, and diet and health.

In addition, the videos of three informative workshops have been virtually released this Monday. Prepare your own slime, an experience that involves making slime from common elements of daily life; Preparation of luminiscent nanoparticles, made using a quick and easy technique with organic ligands; and MOF, porous materials to save the planet, consisting of obtaining these materials for application in biomedicine and environmental implications.

Friday 20 closed the Science Week of Gandia, organised by the universities of Valencia and Polytechnic of Valencia and the CEIC Alfons el Vell, in which several conferences have taken place. Among others, by Lucía Hipólito (Cheer up, woman, it’s not that bad!: effect of pain on drug use); Fernando Ballesteros (Habitability of the Universe) or Isabel Cordero (Gravitational Wave Observatories: cutting-edge technology for a fascinating science).

The conversation And what do I do? How to avoid climate fault and take action, by environmentalist Andreu Escrivà, and held at the October for Contemporary Culture Centre has also been one of the activities of Mednight 2020 by the UV. Also, the conference Exploring the planet of food, by Pere Puigdoménech, winner of the XXV «Estudi General» European Award for the Dissemination of Science, and held as part of the conference on the «Ciutat d’Alzira» Literary Awards this year.

The Mednight was born as the result of the collaboration of a consortium of 12 entities: University of Valencia, University of Murcia, Polytechnic University of Cartagena, University of Alicante, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Jaume I University, Fisabio Foundation, Seneca Foundation - Agency for Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia, INCLIVA and the Spanish National Research Council, under the coordination of El Caleidoscopio and with the sponsorship of the Valencian Government through the Foundation of the Valencian Community for the Promotion of Higher Studies (FFES). This is the first event that brings together a consortium that includes these research institutions from the Region of Murcia and the Valencian Community under the seal of event associated with the European Night of Researchers.

You can consult all the Mednight 2020 activities in the playlist of the Youtube Channel of the UV Science Culture Unit: https://ir.uv.es/gy9vZpx

Photo caption: (From left to right). Top row: Carmen Beviá, Anabel Forte, Ana Isabel Marrades, Ana Juan. Second row: Mónica Bolufer, Amparo Alonso. Third row: Emilia López, María Teresa Sanz. Bottom row: Dolors Corella, Pilar Serra, Lucía Hipólito, Raquel E. Galian.