SciLifeLab inspires new generation of scientists

As part of the annual event Researchers’ Night (ForskarFredag), SciLifeLab in Stockholm welcomed high school students from six high schools on September 27.

ForskarFredag is part of European Researchers’ Nights, an initiative that aims to bring researchers closer to the public. Another goal is to motivate young people to embark on research careers. Scientists from the SciLifeLab research community gave presentations on their fields of work, with talks such as A day in the life of bacteria, Small molecules as tools to unravel biology and Cancer Therapy – dogma and future trends. To top it all off, the students were invited for a tour of a few research laboratories.

Anja Reithmeier who works at Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden shows the students around at the unit. She explains that the robots the students are looking at does what you tell them to, nothing more and nothing less. But what if they would do something else, something wrong, a student asks.

“In that case, they stop and give you an error report”, says Anja Reithmeier.

Another student wants to know if it was hard to learn how to work with the robots.

“You learn the machines pretty quickly. The most important thing is that you like what you do and find it interesting, then it isn’t hard to learn”, says Anja Reithmeier.

When asked why she finds Researchers’ Nights important, Anja Reithmeier explains that she was not the best student at a young age. She wanted to work with something involving medicine, but had no one in her vicinity that could give her ideas of what she could do.

“I think it’s important to show how this works, and informing young people is a good way to start. It’s so great when they initially are a bit hesitant, but eventually smiles and you can tell that they find it interesting”, says Anja Reithmeier.