Congratulations to Chiara Gandini, OBL Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, who was a finalist in the prestigious Skolar Award where she pitched her idea to tackle the threat of a major food crisis through the use of vertical growing techniques to a crowd of 2000 people (and several OBL members watching the livestream from Cambridge!).

Although the idea did not win the overall prize, Chiara fulfilled her objective in entering the competition:

My idea is in between academia and industry so I was curious to learn how to communicate it to different audiences. I think that as scientists we need to get trained to communicate our ideas with the bigger audience. 

Thanks to a gruelling schedule of training in the run up to event, she was pitch-perfect on the day. Watch in full below and find more information on the Skolar Award website here.