The winners are Iñigo González de Arrieta Martínez, Iker González Cubiella, Maider Beitia San Vicente, Itziar Urizar Arenaza, Izaro Zubiria Ibarguren and Iñaki Sanz Azkue. For his part, Martin Etxauri Sainz de Murieta has received the scholarship to develop the Fossil Plastics project; and the Merit Award has been for the Doctor of Biology Jesús Mari Txurruka Argarate.
The aim of these awards is to promote, reward and recognize the dissemination, journalism and social insertion in Basque of topics and research in the field of science and technology. Get on the train! It was this year's motto.
Winners by category:
The award for the article of general disclosure has been for the bilbaíno Iñigo González de Arrieta Martínez and the ondarrés Iker González Cubiella, with the article entitled In search of the spheres of Dyson. The jury has valued the work done to "make known a difficult concept in a very entertaining way and that science also serves to know what may exist".
Although only one work can be awarded in the category of generic publishing articles, the jury members have decided that another work deserves special mention, as there has been "close competition" with the winning work. "The article makes a very interesting game: Cells are online, using social networks as a metaphor, to explain what communications are like between cells," he explained. The authors of this study are Gasteiztarra Maider Beitia San Vicente and the bilbain Itziar Urizar Arenaza, all of them from Vitoria-Gasteiz.
The objective of the Neiker Special Prize is to reward the work carried out in the primary sector. This year's winner was Izaro Zubiria Ibarguren Lizartzarra, Does it use autochthonous or external protein for milk production? For work. This work has also been a category of general outreach articles and, according to the jury members, "it is very well explained, in a clear way, although behind there is a lot of research work and they have also praised the will to respond to a real problem of livestock".
Another section of the category of articles of dissemination of the CAF-Elhuyar Awards, the award for the article of disclosure based on the author's doctoral thesis, has been declared desert, since very few works have been received and the minimum criteria were not met. In any case, jury members have stressed the importance of this category, as it allows authors to expose and disseminate their doctoral work to the general public and to society in general.
All the winners received a prize of 2,000 euros and a sculpture by Imanol Andonegi Mendizabal, one of them awarded. In addition to the awards, CAF-Elhuyar offers €5,000 in support of projects to bridge science and society. This year the winning project was Fossil Plastics. In the words of the jury members, "it has a very interesting approach, responds to a concern today and today, and incorporates the personal, with its own personality". The author is Martín Etxauri Sainz de Murieta de Burlada.
After the awards ceremony, the authors, Ander Gortazar Balerdi and Jacek Markusiewicz, have shown the result of the project that last year received the creation grant Zientzia Soziala: Bastards!
Finally, the Board of the Elhuyar Foundation awards the Elhuyar Award for Merit, with the objective of paying tribute to those who have stood out in the normalization of the Basque Country and in the dissemination of science and technology. This year, the prize was awarded to the Doctor of Biology Jesús Mari Txurruka Argarate for his work in the dissemination of science and in the normalization of the Basque Country.