'Science in 200 Seconds': UBA's Audiovisual Initiative to Spread Knowledge

How can cities be prepared for climate change? What is nanotechnology and what is its purpose? Can neuroscience improve learning in schools? How to turn polluted water into a reusable resource? These questions are some of the questions researchers at the University of Buenos Aires ask themselves every day. The answers can be found in “Science in 200 Seconds,” a series of audio-visual short films that seeks to inform the community of the many investigations taking place at UBA, which this year celebrates its two-hundredth anniversary.

This cycle of videos, which began to be published in October, already has 21 high-quality presentations on the website www.ciencia200.uba.ar and plans to add promotional palaces in each four-month period to tell how scientific research has progressed, using slang and synthetic language capable of Adapting challenging science techniques to everyday speech, according to times imposed by new technologies.

UBA President Alberto Barbieri explained that this scientific publishing initiative “aims to inform the community of some of the scientific developments being developed by the university that have tangible impacts in various areas of public life.”

For his part, co-director of the Laboratory of Innovation and Artificial Intelligence at the College of Law (IALAB), Juan Gustavo Corvalan, emphasized that in order to adapt technical discourse to such a short form, “the key is comparisons and metaphors, because the only way to approach something one does not understand is to build an analogy, a bridge It allows you to jump over the language barrier and the knowledge barrier.”

“This project is challenging because, given that we are today very accelerated and have what is called information overload, we not only have to speak quickly, in a dynamic and friendly way, but we also have to find everyday examples so that a person can empathize and thus understand scientific and technological developments or more discourses. technique,” Corvalan told the university’s extension.

In one of the videos, Corvalán explains how AI can simplify judicial processes, allowing for better use of state resources than using Prometea, a system incubated by the UBA Law School and the Attorney General’s Office, which led to the creation of IALAB, the first artificial intelligence lab developed at the Faculty of Law in Latin America.

According to Corvalan, the high quality of the script, picture and sound of the audiovisual production “Science in 200 Seconds” puts the University of Buenos Aires at the “vanguard of communication” in academic matters, in line with the recent qualification obtained in the QS International Ranking, which ranked UBA as the best university Spanish-speaking for the seventh consecutive year and 69th among the best academic institutions in the world, above public study houses in France and Spain.