Jair Santanna, cyber security expert at the University of Twente, won the Dutch finals of FameLab, an international science communication contest. His next step: the international competition at Cheltenham Science Festival, with participants from 27 countries.
You may be an excellent scientist, but can you also convince a lay audience, in a pitch of no more than three minutes? Jair Santanna knows how to do that like no other. He is a very enthusiastic and inspired researcher and teacher, and he likes spreading the message about his ambition to tackle DDoS attacks: a highly topical problem that threatens vital internet services every day. During the qualifying rounds at the University of Twente, he already convinced the jury. On May 9, he also conquered the national TivoliVredenburg stage in Utrecht. Two UT scientists reached this national round: next to Santanna, Geert Folkertsma participated, with a pitch on cheetah robots.
FameLab is an international science communication competition, started at Cheltenham Science Festival in 2005. The Dutch partners in this are: University of Twente, AMC/University of Amsterdam, TU Delft, University of Groningen/Science LinX and Wageningen University & Research.
Cheltenham Science Festival takes place from June 5 to June 10. Jair Santanna will compete against young scientists from 27 countries.
Dr. José Jair Cardoso de Santanna is with the Design and Analysis of Communication Systems (DACS) group, of the UT faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.
