Submitted Abstract
In recent years, Luxembourg has become a worldwide hub for computational biology. However, the understanding of the wider public about the discipline has to be developed further. We identified the barriers as i) the lack of opportunities to exchange colloquially about science and ii) the access to the discipline that goes through communicating concepts related to computational biology and science in general.In this event, basic concepts in computational biology as well as general science will be communicated with a scheme similar to pub quizzes. The audience, consisting of research community members in Luxembourg as well as the wider public, will compete with each other in mixed groups by answering questionnaires. Questions are chosen according to common knowledge of major scientific events and discoveries, including all scientific fields (physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry), and with a focus on computational biology. In every edition of Sci-Pub, an established researcher will be invited to join the quiz, in order to foster interaction with the public, without formal considerations. A set of science-related prizes will be given to the winners of each Sci-Pub quiz night.Over the funding period of 5 months, the events will take place every second month starting in May 2017, with 4 events in total. This will ultimately engage more people and reach a bigger audience. At the end of the funding period in October 2017, there will be a special edition on computational biology, as part of the planned social event for the 2nd national RSG Luxembourg congress, in which internationally renowned scientists will be invited to join.To increase the visibility of the events, we will use the established social media structures (twitter, facebook) of RSG Luxembourg through pay-per-click ads. The main aim of this project is to bring together the research community with the public to promote science, in particular computational biology, as well as the scientists in Luxembourg. By setting these events in a bar, we aim to create a more familiar environment with vivid exchange and engagement, which would otherwise be not possible.The events will be organized by the International Society for Computational Biology´s Regional Student Group Luxembourg (RSG Luxembourg a.s.b.l.). The RSG Luxembourg is a student association in computational biology officially affiliated with the Student Council of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). The focus of the RSG Luxembourg is to unite young scientists from interdisciplinary fields to tackle new challenges in bioinformatics and computational biology. The events will be important for the publicity and public visibility of the RSG as well as representing the young scientists of Luxembourg.