Ecsite is delighted to announce the winners of the 10th Mariano Gago Ecsite Awards

An unprecedented number of applications were received for the 10th Annual Mariano Gago Ecsite Awards resulting in two very worthy winners from France of the Beacon of the Year Award and Excellence in Science Engagement Award.

Ecsite, the European network of science centres and museums with over 300 member organisations announced the winners of the 2024 Mariano Gago Ecsite Awards during the Ecsite Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, hosted by the Kersnikova Institute.

The Beacon of the Year Award celebrates inspirational individuals who have made a significant contribution to engaging citizens with science and the Ecsite network. The 2024 Beacon of the Year Award winner is Francis Duranthon, Director of the Natural History Museum of Toulouse. The Jury selected Francis for his long career as a remarkable leader, museum director and science communicator who has shown great versatility and skills especially in producing compelling television programmes engaging citizens in science.

The Excellence in Science Engagement Award was won by Nausicaa, Centre National de la Mer for their Project Blue Living Lab. Celebrating a project or initiative by an Ecsite member organisation, the Jury selected Nausicaa for the Excellence in Science Engagement Award because they were impressed by the out of the ordinary nature of the initiative which engaged multiple stakeholders including businesses and citizens and importantly is scalability for application in smaller organisations.

The 2024 winners were selected by an esteemed jury of previous winners and experts from the science engagement field led by Chairperson Maya Halevy, former Beacon Winner and Director of the Bloomfield Science Centre in Israel. Ecsite and the Jury extend their congratulations to the 2024 winners.

The Mariano Gago Ecsite Awards were created in 2015 to recognise and encourage creative and impactful work in the field of science and society engagement, is sponsored by LIP, Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics. LIP is the reference institution for experimental particle physics and associated technologies in Portugal.