Giving people the chance to take part in Science funding : the SciFund challenge

Published originally in Agora, the blog of the L'Oreal Foundation for women in science. This is my post in that blog about the SciFund challenge.

It’s obvious that the economic crisis we are suffering is affecting science. We are seeing science budgets shrink quite quickly all around the world. We are seeing scientists struggling to find money to do their research. We are seeing a decrease in the trust of governments and institutions in research. And this is going to last for a while. But it is in moments like this that creative ideas arise.

Have your say in the European Research Area

We are always complaining about the fact that the public organisations don't listen to us. Governments, universities and international organisations usually write laws and regulations not taking into account the people that these are going to affect. However, I have to say that there is an organisation that, since a long time ago, does take into account citizens opinions when the time of writing its documents comes: the European Commission. I know what you are thinking: " but the European Commission produces not binding documents, but recommendations". Yes, you are right. But these are recommendations at European level that, little by little, governments, universities and other kind of organisations take.

SciFund is really happening!!!

Last month has been crazy. Apart from the regular work in the lab I've been doing something else. Something different... and quite fun I have to say. It´s been a month of thinking about how to explain my project with regular words and how to explain it in a catchy and good video as well!!

The SciFund Challenge has been a very important and special part of my life this month. And after all the work done and the collaboration with other scientists to get our projects done in the best way possible this part of it is ended. The experience is been great and I have made my first video ever!!!! I'm so proud of it...

But the good news are that the public part of SciFund is starting now!!!! Finally, all the effort and the work we have been doing for the last month will pay off. Well, we hope so. Now we will see if we've done a good job or not. If people like our project, or not. It's pretty exciting.

Now it's time for a different job. Getting our projects funded by people. It's a proper job of marketing and a good experience for us, scientist, to go out and spread the word about our research. This is something that we don't do very often and can be scary. Well, it is scary. These last days since the SciFund went live have been also frenetic. Thinking about who to contact to get some publicity for my project and trying to convince my friends to donate to it.

It's something completely new for me and I'm loving it. Now there is almost one and a half months to see if I'm good at marketing my project and I can get people as excited about my project as I am. Let's see what it happens and good luck to all #SciFunders!!!

Check out my #SciFund project Cancer? Yeast has the answers and fuel it!!!!
Published originally in the SciFund blog
And the same day in the SciFund blog my project as the Feature Project of the day!!!!

Opening post of the VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry

It looks like the VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry starts today!!!! And this month I have the honor of hosting it here, in this blog. The quality of the last edition, that Eroyuela has hosted in his blog, has been really high and it´s going to be very difficult to beat. But because I am the way I am, I'm going to try it... this is like life... we learn from the good and bad things of our predecessors, to try to make it even better... and I'm not saying that there has been anything bad, ok?

Our little contribution to science funding: the SciFund challenge

Nowadays we are suffering an economic crisis and one of the fields that is noticing this a lot is the scientific research. National and regional governments are cutting their budgets and some of the biggest cuts are in science. We, researchers, are having a very hard time to do our research and people in general doesn't like these cuts in science.

Well, there is a way for all of us to make a contribution in order to alleviate this money problem in research, or at least to help funding some interesting and useful projects. It's called SciFund challenge and it's an experiment of crowd funding. Several scientists will present their projects in a creative way to get funding from people for those projects. Everybody will be able to fund several research projects through small donations and help these scientists and their groups to do their research.

Scholars with scholarships

Published originally in European Alternatives

Scholarships are grants made to support student's education. Internships, on the other hand, are the periods of time in which a student or trainee works, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.

During the 80’s these funding schemes started to be used as a replacement for proper contracts mainly in the University environment in Spain. Nowadays it has been extended to all kind of sectors. Since this started, scholarships and internships are frequently used as a way of labour insertion for recent graduates. But the reality is that there are thousands of cases of graduates who work without proper funding in business, public administration and research centres. This happens under the mask of a training term funded by a scholarship, a really low salary contract or without any funding.

Spanish May of 2011

*I don't usually blog about these things but I think this is important.

Something is going on in Spain nowadays. What is it? May it be that it has an unemployment rate of 20% that goes up to 40% in young people? May it be that it is going through an economic crisis? May it be that there will be elections in few days with no real political options that are worth to vote for? Or it may be all of them.

Picture from @acampadasol

Scientists and journalists together to stand up for science

Vitae Public Engagement Blog

It's always great to share a day with passionate scientists. It's even better if these scientists are not only passionate about doing science but also about communicating science. And the best thing that can happen is to share a day with those passionate scientists plus journalists and people willing to have a word about science in the mass media, and discuss about these topics with them.

Published in Vitae Public Engagement Blog

I’m a scientist and I do what I love to do. I do experiments with yeast that hopefully will have an impact on cancer research. But I want to make an impact on people as well. As a CRUK funded researcher my experiments are paid with people’s money and I want them to know what I’m doing with their money. I owe them that. Scientists owe society that.

Campaign "No more scholarships for work"

Masking work positions with scholarships or internships is been done in Spain since the 80's starting in the University environment.

Nowadays it has been extended to all kind of sectors (businesses, public administration and research). Since then, scholarships or internships are frequently used as a way of labour insertion for recent graduates. There are thousands of cases of graduates who work without proper funding in businesses, public administrations and research centers. This happens under the mask of a training term funded by a scholarship.

The FJI/Precarios is aware of this situation that many young researchers have. With this campaign we  pretend to give information to the affected people, so they can think about their situation and act through the Labour Inspection.

The Campaign expects to provoke a change in the mentality: zero tolerance against scholarships covering work positions.

More information in the website of the Campaign

Open letter for the future of research in Spain

In face of the worrying future of Spanish research, and given the imminent discussion in Parliament of the partial amendments to the new Law of Science,  an Open Letter has been written to denounce the dire current situation and urge the Government and the opposition to accept the researchers' proposals. Today is been left at Moncloa (Spanish Government building) with the signatures of almost 2500 researchers.


The behaviour of our leaders in scientific matters is unbelievable. This is cutting Spain's possibilities to grow and to be competitive.