Looking back #pint20 and moving forward #pint21

Carl Shneider - Pint of Science Utrecht City Event Manager and Speaker

The holiday season reminds us of family and brings to the forefront a sense of human community; of not-so-common commonness of Homo sapiens. With a reexamined appreciation and renewed care, let us find the time to be more in the moment and enjoy aspects of our common experience that might otherwise be simply overlooked, judged too quickly, seem too ordinary, routine or appear dreadfully unentertaining. Let’s remember there are moments especially allocated for silly walks, even if one happens not to be a pet owner.

I have been very fortunate to be invited by Jorge, Victoria, and Tai to give a PoS talk in 2018 and to continue to be affiliated with this awesome voice for Science...

Guilherme Domingues Kolinger - Pint of Science Groningen Team

In the beginning of this year I discovered that Pint of Science not only held events in the Netherlands, but was looking for extra volunteers! I was so excited to help but everyone knows what happened then... And we powered through it! The adversity of having to organise online events gave us the opportunity to join forces from volunteers in all corners of the country… an incredible team that I have yet to meet in person. I am very excited to see what next year will bring to us, and with our team I am sure there will be great events, online or in person!

Taichi Ochi - Pint of Science Netherlands Director

As this year comes to a close, I can look back with pride with the work the volunteers have done. I had the tremendous privilege to work together with them to help set up our online content (blogs and videos).

This year has been a struggle - and that is putting it nicely. Organising live events and online content require different skill sets but volunteers rose to the challenge. We were here to support each other throughout this year and the content produced highlights the efforts taken. Looking to next year, uncertainty remains but I have faith in the group of volunteers at Pint of Science Netherlands to help spread science communication.

Helena Hartmann - Pint of Science Amsterdam and Vienna Team

I am originally from Germany, but am currently doing my PhD at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit at the University of Vienna in Austria. I investigate the neural underpinnings of empathy for pain and try to understand how we share the suffering of other individuals around us. In Vienna, I joined the Pint of Science Team in 2019 and we organized great events all around our beautiful mind, until Corona sadly had us cancel those events. In 2021, I will be working in Amsterdam at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience to finish my PhD and hopefully support the existing Pint of Science Amsterdam members in communicating some amazing science!

Linda Rieswijk - Pint of Science Maastricht City Coordinator

This year was supposed to be my first year as a city coordinator of PoS Maastricht. Although we already set up some nice arrangements with the local pubs and we came together with our group of volunteers we had to cancel these plans due to the pandemic situation. Instead I had the privilege to work with the PoS Netherlands volunteers to organize this online @pintNLthuis seminar series. It was great to both interact with the volunteers from the different universities within the Netherlands as well as with the diverse range of academics and students of Maastricht University. Let’s hope next year we will be able to meet in person again for some fun science talks and have some beers together!

Angela Sedeño Cacciatore - Pint of Science Amsterdam Team

It is hard to feel close to someone through the lens of a Zoom call, even more so to feel excited about the science they are telling you about. But Pint of Science has risen to the challenge and kept that excitement going. That is why at the end of this year I decided to join and be a part of the team for whatever 2021 may bring. I hope to renew my connection to science, whether online or in person, and try to help others do the same. This is my new year’s resolution: to help the team in bringing that connection to others. Whether online or in person, I hope that we will be able to share our excitement for amazing science as well as some pints!

Eline van Bloois - Pint of Science Amsterdam Team

This year, in February, I joined Pint of Science excited to organise an event during the festival in May. As we all know, the coronavirus blew all plans out of the water. The lockdown made us think out of the box, which came with many new possibilities. After giving it some thought, we decided that we would try to renew the blog. We had a few researchers do a blog takeover, writing about their own research, and wrote some posts ourselves. I am grateful I got to play a role in this renewal and look forward to continuing this blog.