Imperial began its annual search for the best young science essayists with the launch of this year's Science Challenge competition.

The launch was attended by staff, students and competition judges, and featured a range of exciting science demonstrations designed to stir the entrants’ imaginations and get their creativity flowing. 

The competition, organised by the Royal College of Science Union (RCSU), aims to promote scientific communication and creative thinking and has categories for both Imperial students and school pupils. 

The entrants have a choice of three questions set by the judges as well as a video category to tackle. 

The prizes on offer include £1000 for the College winner and £500 for the schools winner, with both also receiving a tour of the CERN facility in Switzerland. As well as the overall awards there will also be prizes in each of the question categories.  

The competition was officially launched by the Chair of Imperial’s Court and Council, and the former head of MI5 Baroness Manningham-Buller. 

Baroness Manningham-Buller stressed the importance of communicating the relevance of science in the modern world: 

“Science has the capacity not only to deal with our health issues but many of the issues in the world today.” 

The Science Challenge 2014 organisers and judges

The competition will be judged by a panel of experts comprising of Professor Fay Dowker, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, Jon Kudlick, Director of Communications at Society of Biology, Dr Jad Marrouche, a CERN physicist and ex-RCSU President and Imperial alumnus Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent at the BBC. The overall winner selected by Science Challenge Ambassador Professor Lord Winston. 

Plabon Saha, RCSU President and one of the organisers of this year’s competition said: 

“Sometimes the importance of what scientists do is lost in how their work is communicated more widely. This competition aims to address that by showing the value of good communication and engagement. Skills like this are vital in portraying science as an exciting and valuable subject in the public eye.” 

Plabon was keen to highlight the benefits of promoting the competition in schools as well as on campus. 

“By focussing on school students as well those already at Imperial we really hope we can reach out and inspire the next generation of scientific talent.”

 For more information on the competition, its prizes and how to enter see: http://rcsu.org.uk/sciencechallenge/

*All photos by Benjamin Lester