At the 5th ScienceSLAM Helsinki, these five performances will compete for the audience’s applause:

Alessandro Valitutti (Computer Science): „Computational Humor“

Anmol Kumar (Neuroscience): „Dancing of brain through body“

Toma Susi (Materials Science): „The story of an article“

Chiara Gasparetti (Biochemistry): „Music notes of enzymology“

Anna-Maria Lahesmaa-Korpinen (Systems biology): „The choreography of the cancer proteome“

If you are curious to discover what is happening behind the closed doors of our local laboratories and institutes, join ScienceSLAM for an intriguing event between science and entertainment!

The 5th ScienceSLAM Helsinki is organized in collaboration with the Technology Acadamy Finland and part of the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 Pavilion programme. The event is free of charge.

At MoA Slam, 6 selected Aalto graduates will get the chance to enter the race for the “MoA Slam 2012″ award!  The rules of the competition are simple. Each competitor has maximum 10 minutes to present his/her research topic and fascinate, inspire, move or entertain the audience—and win their votes. All selected competitors will get the chance to participate in a one-day training session before the event to work on their stage skills and polish their performances. The lucky winner of the “MoA Slam 2012″ award will be rewarded with a prize money of 500€.

We are now looking for 6 performers for MoA Slam 2012! If you want to participate in the event with your performance, please send your application to: moa@scienceslam.fi. Deadline for applications for MoA Slam 2012 is 13.4.2012. More information on the event and how to apply can be found here.

At the 4^th ScienceSLAM Helsinki, these six performances will compete for your applause:

- Lauri Jarvilehto: „Using your intuition“ (philosophy)

- Laurila Pekka, Jaan Praks: „Aalto-1 – How to design and build a satellite“ (space technology)

- Veikka Pirhonen: „eSINi“ (renewable energy, business)

- Patrick Göttner: „Fine feathers make fine birds“ (economics / social science)

- Roxana Ola, Kilian Guse: „Desperate Housewives: How viruses trick their host cells“ (virology)

- Igor Radun: „Driver fatigue“ (traffic psychology)

The 4^th ScienceSLAM Helsinki will take place on 27.3.2012 at Korjaamo’s beautiful Vaunusali, which features a wonderful stage for the performances and comfy auditorium with great view and space enough for everyone – promised

Below, the time schedule:

19:00             Doors open

20-22:00       Showtime

22:00- …       Afterparty

Before and after the show, we are looking forward to some true audio pleasures from Miss MJ’s musical compendium. She finds that black holes are pretty much everywhere (especially in modern pop music) and impressed the organizers with her detailed knowledge on the scientific connections of seasoned rock stars (…did you know that Mark Oliver Everett, the lead singer of the Eels, is the son of one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century?). Smiles guaranteed.

So, everything in place for – what is safe to promise will be - an evening to remember!

Pre-sale of the tickets is available for 6e through tikett.fi. Secure your ticket now! Remaining tickets will be sold at the door on the day of the event.

Looking forward to seeing you at the 4^th ScienceSLAM Helsinki!

Your ScienceSLAM Helsinki team

hope you have arrived well in the new year and you are all doing great! For ScienceSLAM, 2012 is going to be an exciting year with a lots of new and fun projects planned and we would be happy to have you along for that.

To start things off, this year’s first ScienceSLAM is going to be held on 27.3.2011, 20-22:00 at Korjaamo, Helsinki. Again, we are looking for 6 enthusiastic scientists to present their research! If you want to participate in the next ScienceSLAM – either by yourself, or as a team - then send us a short description of your planned performance and enter the competition! The application form and more info can be found here. Deadline for applications for the 4th ScienceSLAM Helsinki is the 27.2.2012.

For the 4th event, we will move to Korjaamo’s big and beautiful Vaunusali which means we will have a a great stage, wonderful acoustics and atmosphere and – !! - a place to sit for everybody. Pre-sale of the tickets (6e) will be available soon through Tiketti.

With kindest New Year’s greetings,

Your ScienceSLAM Helsinki team

The atmosphere was loaded with excitement when Sofia Ahola-Erkkilä was entering the stage to start the event with her story about a far-away kingdom, beautiful princesses, evil enemies and brave heroes – on the way explaining the role of DNA maintenance in mitochondria, our cells’ energy factories, and its role in hypoxic insults such as cardiac arrests. Terhi Rasilo, the second performer in line, did not need any words to present her research topic. Accompanied by Olli Attila on the piano, Terhi invited the audience to sit back and dive with her into the wonders of the carbon cycle, dancing her way from the atmosphere through the trees to the ground, and from ground with the water through the lakes back to the atmosphere.

The evening’s third performer, Alex Popa, a computer scientist from Aalto University, showed us why maths is essential in computer science – by using everything from a magic tie knot to a life karaoke experiment with the audience. Siiri Viljanen’s presentation “Utilization of sulfite spent liquor for chemical production” was next in the line-up. To the horror of the organizers, Siiri was nowhere to be found but instead, Herbert Einstein, a crazy lab-coat and lederhosen sporting German, stormed the stage with impressive looking machinery to be later revealed as his sulfite bioreactor from which he managed to produce all sorts of useful and useless chemicals. As Siiri re-appeared at a later stage of the evening, more than a few in the audience claim to have noticed striking similarities to the presenter of her talk.

The second-to-last performance of the night was given by Sakari Ylivuori. His topic was the evolution of a musical piece over time through modifications by the composer. Based on surviving historical manuscripts, he demonstrated the successive stages of Sibelius’ choral work ‘Tanke, se, hur fågeln svingar’  - with the help of a 11 piece choir ensemble, thereby tracking Sibelius’ creative process. At the same time,  a new ScienceSLAM record on the number of performers simultaneous on stage was created. Music was also the medium of the last presentation “Horror autotoxicus”, by Nora Pöntynen. A change in style, however, was easily recognized when deep hip hop basslines were rolling through Korjaamo’s speakers and ‘Dr. No’ and the AIRE knock-out mouse ‘Ben’ took over the stage. Rapping their way through the mysteries of our immunity system, Ben and Dr. No told us “why your own cells can attack your body, and how they are taught not to be so naughty”.  Yo!

With such an amazing performance of all 6 presenters, the audience had a tough job to decide on whom to give their vote for the Slammer of the night, the winner of the golden microphone. In a tight count, Sakari Ylivuori and his magnificent ‘SLAM dunk choir’ made the race and took home the winning trophy. Congratulations, Sakari!!

The scientific part of the event was followed by an after-party at Korjaamo’s bar where DJ Solareclipse and his wing man were serving delicious beats while audience and performers could get to know each other over a beer or apple juice.

A big thank you to everyone, the fantastic audience, amazing performers and all of you who made the 3rd ScienceSLAM Helsinki what it was – a wonderful evening between science and entertainment!

Photo and video coverage of the event and all performances will be uploaded soon.

The 3rd ScienceSLAM Helsinki will feature a Lab-gone-Lederhosen biotech engineer, a full-size choir on the hunt for Sibelius’ creativity, a singing software engineer, a talking computer scientist, the Super Mario Bros housekeeping your DNA and a forestry researcher sharing with you the choreographic wonders of the carbon cycle. Check out the detailed program at our Event section!

Pre-sale of tickets for the event (5€) is first time available via tiketti.fi! So, secure your ticket in advance and avoid queuing. Remaining tickets will be sold at the door on the day of the event.

Come join us and bring your friends!

we are happy to invite you to come and join us for the 3rd ScienceSLAM Helsinki on 13.12.2011, at Korjaamo, Helsinki. After two great events at Nosturi Alakerta, we are looking forward to moving to our new venue at Kulttuuritehdas Korjaamo which will provide us with more flexibility in space and a beautiful setting to host our great performers (we will have a real stage now!). Starting from this event, we will offer pre-sale tickets via with Tiketti.fi, so you can avoid queueing and we can plan a bit better ahead. Suiting the time of the year, we are also working on a little pre-Christmas surprise for you… It’s going to be exciting!

As always, we would also like to encourage your active participation. ScienceSLAM is all about its great performers and we can’t wait to get to know our new round of brave competitors. If you would like to participate in the next event , either by yourself or as a team, or would like to suggest somebody please get in contact with us! Our application form is available here.

Hope to see you soon!

Your ScienceSLAM Helsinki team

Inside the sold out Nosturi Alakerta, in total 6 presenters were competing for the votes of the audience, who could experience some really extra-ordinary performances.

The list of performers at the 2nd ScienceSLAM Helsinki was:

- André Schumacher, “Distributed Algorithm for Spanning Trees (a human experiment)”

- Eino Partanen, “Dancing – from personality and perception to rehabilitation”

- Hanna Ollila, “Awake nightmare”

- Jarno M. Koponen, “Futureful – A Predictive Discovery Engine”

- Jelena Telenius, “Why does indian curry look yellow?”

- Kumaripaba Athukorala, “AudioImger – Simplest Video Creation”

Thanks again to all the presenters for the great show, and to the audience for their enthusiastic support. It has been a wonderful evening!

As a little special and tribute to the beginning of summer we will have Nosturi’s terrace reserved for our Afterparty. As for now, the weather forecast looks good, so take the chance to stay around for a chilled (and special-priced) Mojito and get to know each other! DJ Solareclipse will take care of our musical pleasures.

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday!

Of course, there ain’t no ScienceSLAM without its bold slammers. So pluck up your courage and unleash the hidden entertainer in you. Take the chance to present your research and show us what’s motivating you about it! We are accepting applications from now. If you are interested to perform, just drop us a short mail and we will get back to you immediately. Spread the word!

Poster, 2. ScienceSLAM Helsinki, 22.6.2011