Dinner in the House of Lords, anyone?

This Wednesday the Royal College of Science Union (RCSU) announced via email to the Faculty of Natural Sciences that it will be holding the Science Challenge 2012 Final in the House of Lords. The Science Challenge is the RCSU’s annual essay competition and this year, entrants will be given four questions to choose from, all set by distinguished judges. A good essay will then land you at a Dinner Reception in the House of Lords, and in with a chance of winning the ‘top prize’. The details of this prize, however, will remain secret until the Launch event.

This year the guest judges – who will all be speaking at the Launch event – include names from all aspects of the media. Professor Lord Robert Winston, Imperial Professor and TV personality will head up the judging panel, complimented by the BBC’s Science Editor and Imperial Alumnus Pallab Ghosh. Mark Henderson – Science Editor of The Times and newly appointed Director of Communications for the Wellcome Trust – and Peter Lacy, the Managing Director of Sustainability at Accenture complete the judges.

The official ‘description’ of the Science Challenge is: “An essay competition that aims to encourage scientific debate, reasoning and the communication of science in a public-friendly context.” In practice, this requires entrants to write a compelling scientific argument that any member of the public, with only a basic grounding in science could read, understand and be swayed by.

Previous winners have branded the RCSU Science Challenge ‘life-changing’. Isha Puri, who won the school’s version of the Challenge (the competition is run in one-thousand schools nationwide concurrently) was awarded – as part of her prize – a financial bursary to study at Imperial. Now in her third year of Imperial, Isha is “preparing herself” to enter the Imperial Students’ competition.

Last year’s competition – reported on by Felix last week – was won by Andrew Purcell for his response to the question “Why should the average person care whether we discover the Higgs Boson?” The essay was a mix of well-researched yet amusing tales of physics banter with his Father and his “thick Lancashire accent”. It is available – along with all the other winning articles – on the Science Challenge website.

At the Launch event, the only two currently unallocated tickets to the House of Lords will be given away for free. The Launch will be held in SAF on Tuesday 17 January 2012 at 6pm. Unlike previous competitions, tickets for the Final won’t be on sale: the only way to get to the House of Lords is by entering or via these two free tickets.

Registration for the Launch is required, free, and now open for students of all Faculties at the Science Challenge website, rcsu.org.uk/sciencechallenge. For more information, contact science.challenge@imperial.ac.uk.