Jot Down Ciencia

Since 2015, DIPC has been collaborating with the cultural magazine Jot Down as a sponsor of its science section and popular science competition. Over the years, the categories of the competition have diversified, and the Jot Down Science event where the awards ceremony takes place has reached its eleventh edition in 2024. 

Jot Down Ciencia Contest 

The Jot Down science popularisation competition currently consists of four categories: photography, illustration, essay and narrative. This competition is sponsored by the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc (LSC), the Museo Laboratorium de Bergara and the collaboration of the University of Seville, Jot Down, Mercurio Magazine, and Nextdoor Publisher.

Information about the competition     See all winners

Jot Down Ciencia Event

The awards ceremony takes place every year at the Jot Down Ciencia event, a relaxed event that offers the general public talks, round tables and book presentations by regular contributors to the cultural magazine Jot Down, as well as guest scientists and popularisers. The Jot Down Science Event is traditionally held in Seville, but in 2021, the event took place for the first time in Donostia/San Sebastián, in 2022 it travelled to Jaca, and this year, in 2024, it has been held again in Donostia/San Sebastián.

The host of the 2021 and 2024 events in Donostia/San Sebastián was DIPC:

Edition 2024 ‘Hominids’ Donostia / San Sebastián

Check the program of activities

The competition and the event were dedicated to hominids, the primate family that includes modern humans (Homo sapiens) and their direct ancestors, as well as other close extinct relatives. The programme included different formats with lectures, interviews and panel discussions with leading researchers in the fields of palaeoanthropology, archaeology, human evolution, physics and geology. The programme also included complementary activities designed for children and families.

Edition 2021 ‘Synergies’ Donostia / San Sebastián

Check the program of activities

The central focus of the 2021 event and competition was “synergies” in recognition of the NEXT-BOLD project and the scientist and Jot Down collaborator Juan José Gómez Cadenas, Ikerbasque researcher at the DIPC, who, together with Fernando Cossio, chemist at the UPV/EHU and president of Ikerbasque and Roxanne Guenette, physicist at Harvard University, received an ERC Synergy grant in 2020, endowed with 9.3 million euros. The meeting brought together some of the best-known faces of science, illustration and popularisation with a dynamic programme that included short talks, a round table on science and comics, and the award ceremony of the science popularisation competition.

Publications

During these years, the DIPC and Jot Down have jointly published the books ‘El dilema Turing y otros textos científicos’ and ‘Cañones de wolframio y otros textos científicos’, which bring together some of the most outstanding works submitted to the competition.

Cañones de Wolframio y otros textos científicos

El dilema Turing y otros textos científicos