Once again this year researchers have taken the opportunity to speak openly about their use of animals in research through our #TransparencyThursday Q&A (see all episodes on our YouTube channel).
Among the researchers featured was Esperanza Domingo Gil at the University of Bremen, Germany, who explained why she uses monkeys to understand the fundamentals of attention in the brain.
Describing the importance of this type of research, she said: “My hope is that basic research such as this can unravel these very exciting mysteries of the brain, so that in the future, other researchers can build upon our findings to help heal the brain when disease or age take over.”
Another #TransparencyThursday episode featured malaria researcher Miguel Prudêncio, at EARA member the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM), Portugal. Miguel, who featured prominently in the Portuguese media during the Covid-19 pandemic, also shared his top tips for communicating science with the public.
And as part of the EARA annual Be Open about Animal Research Day (#BOARD24), which took place in May, several EARA member institutions contributed Q&A videos for the campaign, including a group of researchers from the Spanish National Centre for Biotechnology (CNB); Georgios Petrellis from the University of Liège, Belgium; Magdalena Lorenowicz from the Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC), Netherlands; and Susana Santos at ICVS, Portugal. While from around the world there were also contributions from the Philippine Association for Labaratory Animal Science (PALAS).
Meanwhile, at the start of the year, PhD student Svilen Georgiev, at the University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, featured in an episode of the EARA #LetsTalkSciComm series, where he discussed his podcast, Neuroscience and Beyond – a public platform for researchers to discuss their work in neuroscience, as well as animal welfare, ethics and other relevant topics.
In 2024, EARA introduced a new format of monthly news round-up videos, to allow viewers to catch up with the most popular stories in animal research news, media and policy from the EARA News Digest.
Please get in touch with us if you would like to take part in any of our video series in 2025.