The British Embassy joins the Pint of Science Festival in Madrid with #PINT25ESUK, to celebrate the ties that unite Spain and the United Kingdom in science and research.
#PINT25ESUK will take place on Monday , May 19, and Wednesday, May 21 from 7 pm in La Pecera, the CBA cafeteria on Madrid’s Gran Vía, thanks to the support of this institution.
Five researchers, both British and Spanish, professionally linked to the UK, will tell the public at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA) café about their most cutting-edge research on pollution, leukaemia, the interior of the planet or the role of healthy eating in disease prevention.
The British Embassy in Madrid and Pint of Science are collaborating for the second year on this initiative, which aims to enable adults and children to chat directly with researchers in an informal setting -bars and cafes, and strengthen links between the research community in both countries.
Pint of Science was born in 2012 in the UK, when Michael Motskin and Praveen Paul, two researchers at Imperial College London, organized an event called ‘Meet the Researchers’ (“Meet the Researchers”); where they brought together people affected by Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, motor neuron disease and multiple sclerosis in their labs to show them the kind of research they’re doing. This experience was inspiring for both attendees and researchers. They thought; “…if people want to go into the laboratories to meet the scientists, why not take the scientists where the people are?”. And so Pint of Science was born. They had little idea that a few years later, their idea would go around the world, with this 2025 being celebrated simultaneously on five continents, with 27 participating countries. From there, and with the rest of the host countries, a three-day marathon of science and bars around the world will begin.
This afternoon, La Pecera del Círculo de Bellas Artes will welcome Ana del Río Machín, who will explain the new strategies to improve diagnosis and treatment in leukemias. Ana is a researcher who lives between London and Madrid: she leads her own group at the Barts Cancer Institute in London and also runs a research laboratory at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation. Mark Theobald, a British air pollution expert and researcher at the Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology Research (CIEMAT), will discuss how computer models help us understand and combat air pollution. The day will also be presented by the director of the Circle, Valerio Rocco, and the British ambassador, Alex Ellis, and will include the creation of a live plastic and musical work that will represent the origin of the universe.
On 21 May, the Spanish-British researcher Eduardo R. Hernández Chambers of the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC) will explain how scientists have managed to get a detailed but still incomplete idea of what the interior of our planet is like. Laura Castañar, who in 2019 started her own research group at the University of Manchester and now works at Complutense University, will reveal the secrets that hide molecules and that directly influence our lives. Finally, Silvia Corrochano (Health Research Institute of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital), a neuroscientist with more than ten years’ experience in the UK, will comment to the public how balanced nutrition can improve memory, in addition to preventing and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
All the programming of the X edition of Pint of Science can be found on the festival website and on the CBA website. The talks are accessible to all audiences, in Spanish, and no prior registration is required.
