On Friday evening, more than 12,000 interested visitors came to Jena to immerse themselves in the world of science at universities, institutes, clinics and museums. The AVATAR project also presented itself to the public: At the Center for Applied Research, AVATAR employees from the three coordinating networks InfectoGnostics Forschungscampus, medways e.V. and ITnet Thüringen presented the research project to the public.
A particular highlight was the opening of the virtual Open Science Lab, a digital world of explanation designed to give the interested public an understanding of AVATAR's concepts using VR technology. Two of the six rooms currently under development could already be explored by visitors using VR glasses. There, visitors took part in an interactive survey on data donation and learned in a playful way why personal data must be anonymized.
As part of the Open Science Lab, visitors were also able to visit the virtual laboratory on the use case 'Anonymization of DNA sequence data'. In the use case, researchers from Nanozoo GmbH and Leibniz IPHT are working on a method to remove human DNA from infectious disease samples and thus minimize the risk of patient re-identification. At the stand, the guests were shown the sequencing device used for this purpose, the MinION (Oxford Nanopore Technologies), and had the technology of nanopore sequencing explained to them.
The virtual rooms of the Open Science Lab will be continuously developed and will be accessible via the project website over the coming year.