Libra-net (17): We are on a roll!
Our scholarship recepients won big prizes, our workshops made it to OU Blaže Koneski, and our hackathon made it all the way to Singapore. Plus some science lectures and pop culture recommendations!
1. The KANTAROT stipend recepients are on a roll! Tea Angelova won the prestigious Boris Trajkovski scholarship for a full ride to NOVA International School Skopje. Mila Porjazoska represented Macedonia at the 20th International Junior Olympiad in Thailand as the youngest member of the Macedonian team. Dea Ivanovska won the second edition of the French reading competition organized by the Institut français de Skopje. Zoran Ilijoski won first prize and 500 EUR at the programming competition organized by the Center for Education “New Corner”. Jakov Grujovski won first prize at the National informatics competition. We can’t wait to find out what they will accomplish next!
2. A year ago we organized our first international event, a hackathon for MRI professionals at the Don on Danforth in Toronto. This year, we ventured even farther, to the beautiful Jackie Chan house at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Here is a thread with the hackathon highlights, followed by the MRathon Highlights afterparty at the Blu Jaz, featuring the VIP lounge. Big thank you to everybody who joined and had a drink on us!
3. Science for Kids visited the elementary school Blaže Koneski in Skopje, explaining magnets to its first-graders! While we are at it, mark your calendars for the third Science for Kids conference (October 18-19) that will take place at NOVA International School Skopje.
4. The Center for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research at the University Ss Cyril and Methodius organized two in-person lectures by S(c)iesta members. In April Kiril Gashteovski presented his LLM research to the FINKI students and faculty with a lecture entitled "Tell me a fact and I'll learn: methods for factual information consumption from large textual corpora”. Below is the recording of Kiril’s lecture:
In May, Natasha Jonoska gave a lecture about DNA Self-Assembly and DNA Nanotechnology, and we hope to share the recording with you soon. In the meantime, check out another video by S(c)iesta member Zoran Utkovski, who describes a proof-of-concept implementation of neuromorphic wireless cognition to aid human-robot interactions:
We would love to highlight the work of other S(c)iesta members, so please reach out if you are visiting Macedonia, or if you have an online resource that you would be willing to share with the Macedonian research community. And you should definitely check out ResearchNet.mk, a portal listing collaboration opportunities with over 50 labs around the world.
5. Articles like this one keep us going. Anastasija’s story about life with cystic fibrosis is inspiring and we are happy that Science for Kids is part of her journey. We have never met Anastasija, but we hope that will change in the coming weeks.
6. Finally, we are proud to announce a collaboration with the Gley TV platform! Starting today, the Science for Kids videos will be freely available at the following link:
https://gley.mk/category/3/listing/261/show/10250