Latest news & updates

Dec 15th, 2022, Vienna

We end an year of exciting events at the Deck50 with a final -- and English-- performance of Meet Mendel with performer Severin Bachmayer.

Nov 12th, 2022, Brno

The new Mendel's Greenhouse, built on the original site, is now open to the public! Barbara Fischer attended the ceremony, representing our project.

Nov 2-3rd, 2022, Vienna

The theme of this year's Mendel Days was "Mendel and the world." Lynn Chiu presented our science engagement projects at the Deck50 in the workshop "Teaching Genetics and Mendel."

Oct 13-14th, 2022, Klosterneuburg

Hosted by the KLI in Klosterneuburg, we held our Symposium “Mendel's Legacy in Science and Society”. It centered on science education, history, genetics and science philosophy and featured many interdisciplinary discussions. We cannot thank the speakers enough for their amazing talks, and over these two days it became obvious to us that every attendant, organizer and speaker would take away quite a bit from the event, be it knowledge or insight into a different perspective.

Oct-Dec, 2022, Vienna

More than 20 "Riddles of Inheritance" school workshops and Meet a Scientist: Meet Mendel events were carried out by instructors at the Deck50, NHM Wien. They taught school classes from all over Austria about the complex interplay between different forms of inheritance and environmental factors, how to make Chromosomes visible under a microscope, and what it was like to be both a monk and a scientist at the same time.

July 22^nd-24^th, 2022, Brno

On the 20th (or 22^nd, according to some sources!), our beloved Abbot GJ Mendel finally turned 200 and the Mendel Festival began. Our personal highlight was attending a special tour of the Mendel Muesum with director Blanka Křížová and "meeting" Gregor himself in his study (naturally, our own Mendel impersonators were in complete awe).

July 20^th-22^nd, 2022, Brno

Our project partners from the Augustinian abbey and the Mendel Museum hosted the Mendel Genetics Conference this year on Mendel's birthday. Scientists and historians from all over the world gave talks about the history of genetics and Mendel's life, but also on current research in medicinal, plant, animal, human and microorganism genetics. We presented our part of the GJM200 project at the poster session.

June 1^st, 2022 Deck50-NHM Wien

Today, the "Meet a Scientist" performance made its (second) debut, this time for the actual target audience: A class of teenage students. It was a definite success! The audience did not look at their phones every few seconds, on the contrary, they were quite attentive. Moreover, their knowlegde, philosophical adeptness and capability of scientific thinking really makes us hopeful for the future of our society.

May 30^th, 2022, Brno

Barbara and Lynn were invited to the opening ceremony of the brand-new exhibition hall on genetics at the Mendel Museum, our project partner. Before the opening ceremony, we participated in a project workshop to discuss how we could further our collaborations with the Mendel Museum and the city of Brno.

May 24^th, 2022, Deck 50-NHM Wien

In anticipation of the school workshops at Deck50 in June, September and October, we had a fun test run with the staff of the Natural History Museum. Drawing on their experience from previous science workshops for schools, they gave us invaluable feedback and we worked out the last kinks of our “The Riddles of Inheritance” school workshop together.

May 20^th, 2022, Deck50-NHM Wien

On the Austrian Long Night of Research (Lange Nacht der Forschung 2022), we debuted our first "Meet a Scientist: Meet Mendel" performance for the general public. Gernot Ensinger took the lead to introduce the audience to Mendel's life, work, and legacy.

May 7^th, 2022, Vienna

As part of Europe Day 2022, we were one of the four EU projects to present what we’re about. Together with our collaborators from the St. Thomas’s Abbey, we set up a booth and talked to people about Mendel’s life and legacy. We also set up a microscope so anyone interested could take a look at chromosomes, the carriers of genetic information, and planted some pea plants together with festival visitors and Saturday shoppers for them to take home, raise and harvest (and maybe even try to replicate Mendel’s work?).

April 28^th, 2022, University of Vienna

The giant pea visited University of Vienna for the 2022 Faculty Day of the Faculty of Life Sciences. Our project partners at Mendel Museum brought many great gifts that day, including Mendel coffee cups and Mendel sparkling wine made in Czechia! We had the chance to introduce our project to the Dean and toast to a great year of projects with our colleagues at the evolutionary biology department.

Mar-April, 2022, Vienna

Throughout March and April, we met with the science communication and science pedagogy team of the Natural History Museum of Vienna to present and workshop our program proposals as well as schedule the school workshops.

Mar 14^th, 2022, Vienna

On this day, we interviewed and hired Gernot Ensinger, neuroscience master student and actor, as one of our "Meet a Scientist: Meet Mendel" performers.

Mar 10-11^th, 2022, BOKU, Vienna

On March 10^th, our project partners at BOKU hosted a virtual "Mendel Walk Vienna: On Gregor Mendel's Viennese footsteps" of Vienna sites related to Mendel's student life at University of Vienna. Barbara gave a talk at the event. We also attended the symposium on the following day "200 years Gregor Mendel: of peas, cows and people" organized by our project partners at BOKU. The giant pea (7 meters in diameter!) traveled to Vienna for the first time!

Feb 24^th, 2022, Brno

Lynn represented the project at the official ground-breaking ceremony of Mendel's greenhouse. We now own one of the blessed hammers of GJM200.

Feb 15^th, 2022, Klosterneuburg

In anticipation of our October symposium "Mendel's Legacy in Science and Society" at the KLI, we met with the Eva Lackner to discuss the logistics and organizational details.

Feb 8^th, 2022, Brno

We are collaborating with marine biologist and science communicator Maria Pinto (Sea&Me) to develop short public videos on the legacy of GJ Mendel in science and society. Our project partner, the Mendel Museum at Brno, kindly supported our trip to film key sites at the St. Augustine Abbey and the Mendel Museum. We got to see the famous 1856 manuscript!

Feb 2^nd, 2022, Vienna

On this day, we interviewed and hired Severin Bachmayer, a master student in evolutionary biology, to the team as our student assistant.

Jan 31^st, 2022, Vienna

We are collaborating with graphic designer and STS scholar Kathrin Gusenbauer (Irrlicht Impressions) on the "corporate design" of our project (including logo, color scheme, background images, etc). Kathrin proposed a full design set based on our responses to a design questionnaire. The results were stunning!

Nov 11^th, 2021, Vienna

We value talent and expertise in science communication. On this day, we welcomed graphic designer Kathrin Gusenbauer, science communicator Maria Pinto, and videographer Magdalena Fischer to the team!

Nov 3^rd-4^th, 2021, Brno

Project co-organizers Barbara Fischer, Philipp Mitteroecker and Lynn Chiu attended the 2021 Mendel Days event organized by Masaryk University, with Barbara giving a talk on Mendel's Viennese influences. After a tour of the Mendel Museum, we kicked off our first official workshop with project partners across the border. A surprise press conference revealed a keystone project of the Masaryk University: the archaeological excavation and exhumation of Gregor J. Mendel himself.

The Mendel Days recordings can be found here.

Sept 30^th, 2021, Deck50-NHM Wien

Delayed by the pandemic, Deck50 finally launched in late 2021! Here we are having a toast with the Head of the Science Communication Iris Ott and Head of Deck50 Ines Méhu-Blantar. We were informed that we were the first externally-funded project to launch programs at the Deck50.