One Health PACT & Technasium: a good team!

During the experimental season of 2022 a masterclass focusing on research with mosquito alert data, was organized at the Living lab research station of Leiden University by PhD’s Ayat Abourashed and Sam Boerlijst and PI’s Santi Escartin, Frederique Bartumeus and Maarten Schrama. The masterclass allowed ninety students from three Technasium schools to interactively learn about the work within the OneHealth PACT, research in general and allowed them to interact with researchers (in this case Ayat, Santi and Sam) to develop their own research questions. 

This was done by a combination of games and workshops on the scientific method (what makes a good research question), mosquito ecology and morphology (where you can find them and what they look like), trapping methods (how you collect the mosquitoes) and data analysis (how you can use the data to answer your question). Since the workshop was integrated into the school program in the form of small research projects, the masterclass was used to pick a topic of interest to base their question on. Afterwards students were allowed to contact the researchers for follow up questions, and the researchers were present during grading to inform the teachers of the students their progress. The group that presented their work at the annual meeting had weekly meetings with Sam to try to develop a cheap alternative to the BG-trap that could potentially be used during the coming year.

Date: February 7, 2023