On 4 December at 4 p.m., the winners were presented with the awards at the EXPO stage in the EXPO Festivals zone. Damian Majer was the host during the ceremony, while the awards were presented by Prof. Ryszard Koziołek, General Director of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE.
It is worth noting that it was an open competition. Everyone could submit their nomination proposals to the POP Science Award. The jury, which also includes the winners of the previous two editions of the Award, awarded points to the best proposals. This made it possible to select three nominees in each category. The last stage of the competition was the final vote by the jury and an internet vote via the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE website with a weight ratio of 50% of the internet vote and 50% of the jury vote. A total of 2,373 votes were cast. Thank you!
Dawid Łasiński, the creator of the Pan Belfer channel, was selected as the winner in the Video Blog category of the POP Science Award of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE 2022. His day job involves being a chemistry teacher at the Dezydery Chłapowski School Complex in Bolechów. In February 2017, he create the Pan Belfer character — an interweb teacher. Dawid Łasiński won the Twórca Roku [Content Creator of the Year] competition in the education category as well as the main award in the Twórca Roku 2021 competition. He was entered into the Top 100 list for the years 2019 and 2020 — a list of people who had a significant impact on the development of digital skills in Poland. He also received the Digital Shaper 2020 award — digitalisation and new technologies leader in Poland, and was the finalist of the Nauczyciel Roku 2020 [Teacher of the Year 2020] competition.
In the Website or Blog category, the winners of the POP Science Prize of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE 2022 were the creators of the ‘Nauka o Klimacie’ [Climate Science] website, with editorial team member Aleksandra Kardaś, PhD collecting the award on the team's behalf. ‘Nauka o Klimacie’ is a popular science website disseminating scientific knowledge of the climate, climate change, its consequences, and the possibilities we have to handle this problem. The editorial team also runs Facebook and Instagram profiles, participates in various events (lectures, webinars, science festivals) and makes appearances in mass media.
In the Podcast or Radio Broadcast category, the winner of the POP Science Prize of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE 2022 was Katarzyna Głuch-Juszkiewicz, a journalist with Polskie Radio Katowice, for her radio broadcast and podcast ‘Nauka Każdego Dnia’ [Science Every Day]. She is a radio popular science presenter since the year 2000. The programme ‘Science Every Day’ showcases the achievements of scientists and explains the intricacies of various scientific fields in an accessible manner. Podcasts, under the same name, take their listeners to laboratories and museums. The interviewees teach, they do not lecture, and together with the author, they prove how interesting the world can be.
In the category Think Globally, Act Locally — Academic Community, the winner of the POP Science Award of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE 2022 is Krzysztof Nowosielski, MD, DSc, Assoc. Prof. of the Medical University of Silesia, from the University Clinical Center Prof. K. Gibiński of the Medical University of Silesia in Katowice. Professor Nowosielski is the co-founder and organiser of the periodic live Facebook broadcasts and the series ‘Okiem Ginekologa i Położnej’ [Through the Eyes of a Gynaecologist and a Midwife]. He is also a participant and speaker at educational and preventive meetings organised by gynaecological educator Agnieszka Szuścik, the Amazon Association, Eye to Eye with Cancer Foundation and the Blue Butterfly Association workshops. He is the author of popular science chapters on sexual health after a cancer diagnosis in the book Rakiety. Pięknem w raka and a contributor to numerous radio and television programmes. Currently, he is developing an app for young people and teachers to help them conduct classes on parenting and an app on reproductive health for adults as part of a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science.
In the category Think Globally, Act Locally — Resident of the Silesian Voivodeship, the winner of the POP Science Award of the Silesian Science Festival KATOWICE 2022 is Michał Szydłowski, who considers himself a physics expert by education and a mad scientist by trade. He is a graduate of the Silesian University of Technology. He has been visiting schools, colleges, children’s universities, kindergartens, institutions, and companies for 12 years. He has conducted thousands of workshops, lectures, demonstrations and science shows (3,994 as of October 2022, to be exact). His experiments have made a splash on theatre stages, sports and performance halls, lecture halls, classrooms, PE halls, cinemas, community centres, school sports fields, parks, libraries, fire stations, power stations, as well as the Zielona Góra Philharmonic Hall, the Kazimierz Górski National Stadium and... a church in Katowice. He has appeared in numerous television programmes on TVP2, TVP Katowice, and TVN, and recorded a 22-episode programme ‘Pod lupą’ [Under the Magnifying Glass] for the TV station Fokus. In 2010, he founded an educational company that became known as ‘Laboratorium Pana Korka’ [Mr Cork’s Laboratory].
The winners received statuettes, which were designed and produced by Katarzyna Pyka, PhD, Assoc. Prof. from the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science of the University of Silesia in Cieszyn.
