Health, arts and artificial intelligence recognised in 5th edition of ‘Promotion of Scientific Culture’

The UC initiative Support for the Promotion of Scientific Culture has a clear purpose: to support activities that foster dialogue between science and culture, and to disseminate knowledge produced at the University of Coimbra (UC) to diverse audiences. The 2025 winning projects were presented on 12 September at UC Exploratório – Centro Ciência Viva da UC.

This fifth edition reflects the growing diversity of research areas involved. UC Vice-Rector for Research and Director of the UC Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IIIUC), João Ramalho-Santos, explains that in science communication, “there are traditionally more proposals from the Health and Life Sciences”. This year, however, there was greater variety, including Engineering, Social Sciences and Humanities, as well as the increasing involvement of the Arts, Informatics, Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

For Delfim Leão, UC Vice-Rector for Culture, Communication and Open Science, “this is a particularly successful and interesting initiative, and is fundamentally a ‘translation process’.” He explains that, “When we do research, it is natural to use a more cryptic, hermeneutic type of language to communicate with our peers. The great challenge lies in making this language accessible to a broader audience.”

The initiative, coordinated by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (IIIUC), awarded €3,000 funding to each of the five winning science communication activities.

For Delfim Leão, UC Vice-Rector for Culture, Communication and Open Science, “this is a particularly successful and interesting initiative, and is fundamentally a ‘translation process’.” He explains that, “When we do research, it is natural to use a more cryptic, hermeneutic type of language to communicate with our peers. The great challenge lies in making this language accessible to a broader audience.”