Voss VGS students visit the Chatzigeorgiou lab

A group of second-year students from Voss VGS enjoyed a tour of the Chatzigeorgiou laboratory, guided by master’s student Piraveen Pararajasingham and PhD candidate Andreas Midlang. On a day trip to Bergen, the group visited VilVite before coming to the Centre where they experienced a molecular biology laboratory and our ascidian facility. The students then had a hands-on experience dissecting Ciona intestinalis.

Many of the students had not visited a research laboratory before and found it quite different from what they had expected. Marius Skal Kolås had already seen Ciona specimens in the wild and was interested to learn that the animal was used in research. “I liked it, it was cool to be here and interesting. It is really interesting that you are using sea squirts!”, he said.

The students were accompanied by their Mathematics teacher Per Ole Fremmersvik, who explained that the visit was a welcome break for the class during an intense week of physics and chemistry classes. He hopes that the visit will be an inspiration for the young students. “We are trying to give them some ideas of what they could do in the future”, he explained. For Per Ole, the visit was also an occasion to discover new things. “I had not seen these animals before! It was really cool that this research group is working on these animals, then next door people work on something completely different.”

“Having young people here, especially high school students, helps make our work environment more accessible, making it easier for them to step in and contribute in the future.”
-Piraveen Pararajasingham

Welcoming young visitors is a great experience for researchers at the Centre and an essential aspect of scientific outreach. “It is important that our knowledge is available to everyone”, Piraveen explains. “Having young people here, especially high school students, helps make our work environment more accessible, making it easier for them to step in and contribute in the future.”