£1m for Science Gallery in Dublin

01 August 2008

The Wellcome Trust is supporting the Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin with a capital award of £1 million (€1.25 million). It’s the first time the Trust has made a major award for public engagement with science in the Republic of Ireland.

A flagship initiative in Ireland, the Science Gallery probes important scientific issues through a programme of interactive exhibitions, workshops, events and debate.

Clare Matterson, the Wellcome Trust’s Director of Medicine, Society and History, said: “This is an important and innovative gallery, engaging young adults with science and technology, which the Wellcome Trust is delighted to be supporting.”

The funding will go towards the development of new projects to engage the public with biomedical science. Upcoming exhibits include ‘PAY ATTENTION!’, part of the LAB in the Gallery series, which transports a working neuroscience research laboratory into a public space. Visitors will get the opportunity to participate as human subjects in experiments on attention and meet with researchers carrying out cutting-edge science research in Ireland.

‘PLAGUE’, an upcoming exhibition exploring the nature of epidemics, involves Trinity College immunologists Luke O'Neill and Cliona Farrelly and will launch in 2009.

The Director of the Science Gallery, Dr Michael John Gorman, added: “The support of the Wellcome Trust is a major international endorsement of the vision of the Science Gallery to open science up to debate and dialogue with all other areas of human culture.”

For more information visit the Science Gallery website.

Image: the Science Gallery's logo etched onto a flat diamond surface a few microns wide; sciencegallery.com.