EU-LIFE/Nature Essay Contest awardees announced

The best essay award went to Katherine Ember for Human/Nature, a futuristic piece set in the imaginary Institute of Merged Sciences. Evandro Ferrada and Miles Lizak were runners-up with fictional stories about the aftermath of an 'Eclosion Event' that happened in 2031 and the day-to-day activities of a 'Stupid Questions Office', respectively. Their stories will be published in Nature on Monday 5 June 2023. Stay tuned!

Katherine, Evandro and Miles will present their essays in one of the sessions of the upcoming conference Envisioning the research centres of the future (6-7 June 2023, Lisbon, Portugal), and will have the opportunity to discuss their creation process with members of the jury panel.

This essay contest is part of EU-LIFE's 10th anniversary celebrations. The alliance joined forces with the journal Nature to hold this essay contest with the aim to encourage reflection and generate new ideas about the ideal places to conduct research. Over 320 original literary pieces were submitted by authors from all over the world. The jury panel responsible for the evaluation of the essays and the selection of the three best pieces was formed by five experts:

• Frances Brodsky, Novelist and Professor of Cell Biology at UCL
• Carolina Mangana Monteiro, Poet and Predoctoral Fellow at CeMM
• Emmy Verschuren, Group Leader & Strategic Research Coordinator at FiMM
• Jack Leeming, Career Editor at Nature
• Giulio Superti-Furga, Co-Chair of EU-LIFE and Scientific Director of CeMM