"La teva idea es ciència!" is launched, the new citizen science contest of the UPC and the iSocial Foundation

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), in collaboration with the iSocial  Foundation and with the support of AGAUR, launches the first edition of the citizen science ideas contest ‘La teva idea és ciència!’. This contest aims to create a space for dialogue between social services users, technicians, researchers, and students to develop innovative solutions to social challenges. This initial edition focuses on people with intellectual disabilities, with the goal of generating proposals to improve their quality of life. The best ideas will be presented in a final event at the UPC in June 2025.

The contest will have several phases for its development throughout the 2024-2025 academic year, starting with an online citizen science training course that is free for research teaching staff (PDI) and students who enroll in the project. This training, provided by the platform Science for Change, aims to provide a skill increasingly valued in R&D.

Once the training is completed, students and PDI will be invited to participate in one of the six meetings with users and technicians from social services to be held between January and February at various libraries on UPC campuses. These meetings, each with a different theme within the scope of intellectual disability, will enable students and PDI to learn firsthand about the challenges that social services users face in their daily lives.

The third phase, to be held in March 2025, will be an online workshop where students, PDI, and social services technicians will share their ideas for R&D projects, from mobile applications to devices or urban planning solutions; any R&D&I idea will be welcome and will be evaluated in the fourth phase by a specialized panel and, at the same time, by a popular jury in which anyone can participate.

At the final event, scheduled for June 2025, the awards for the first edition of ‘Your Idea is Science!’ will be presented, with one prize for the idea most highly valued by the jury and another for the project most voted for by the popular jury. Additionally, an audiovisual report on the development of all phases of the contest will be shown.

You can access all the information and the form through the UPC Citizen Science portal.