An outreach-packed month
Hello everyone!
March has been a whirlwind of outreach After all the build-up, Science is Wonderful in Brussels finally happened—and what an experience it was. Our booth, Explore the world through pollen, was a hit! Visitors got hands-on with our 3D-printed pollen models, peeked through the microscope at real grains, and dived into our interactive activities. The forensic palynology game, The Pollen Detective, was especially popular—kids and teens worked as pollen sleuths to solve a mystery using evidence from plants and ecosystems. The Velcro pollination game was also a crowd favourite, with kids enthusiastically buzzing around as bees. It was fantastic to see so much genuine curiosity and engagement from all ages. Everyone was especially fascinated by how we can use something as tiny as a pollen grain to uncover the history of entire landscapes!
On the heels of Brussels, I also led a session for Ciencia en el Barrio—a brilliant initiative bringing science into local communities. I ran a class that mixed a classic presentation, albeit short, with my documentary. I also visited the school Joseph Tehillot in Milan, my hometown, where we brought a mini version of our outreach activities to the classroom, and this was a great opportunity to teach children of a totally different background. The students got to handle pollen models, watch some of my videos from Amazonia, and get hands-on with pollen by drawing out landscapes based on simulated pollen samples printed out into charts which they could easily use as guides. They were able to reconstruct the landscapes of five different periods of the past 2000 years, only using pollen and some coloured pencils! It’s always refreshing to see how young minds light up with discovery—and how quickly they start thinking like scientists when given the chance.
On the research front, I’m thrilled to share that my paper, Sassoon et al. (2025), has officially been published in Climate of the Past (https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-489-2025)! And in even more good news, the paper by Charton et al. (2025) on the palaeoclimatic reconstructions for Heinrich Stadial 4 in the soutwestern Mediterranean, which I collaborated on, has just been accepted by the Journal of Quaternary Science—so keep an eye out for that one soon!
We’ve got a lot coming up in April, too! One big highlight will be showing my documentary at the EGU conference during the GeoCinema session this April 29th in room E1 from 18:50–19:20. If you're at the conference, be sure to join us—I’d love to see you there (although I’ll participate virtually)!
It’s been a packed but energising month, and although April has just begun I can already feel its momentum. More updates soon!
Stay tuned.
-Dael
