The aim of this initiative, a pioneer among academic centres in our country, is to promote the importance of young scientists' communication skills to help bring science and knowledge closer to the general public.

The final of the first edition of the Rin4' competition, an exercise of scientific dissemination by current young doctoral degree scientists aimed at a non-specialist audience, took place on 8 June in the multipurpose hall of the Mercè Rodoreda building at the Ciutadella campus of Pompeu Fabra University. Previously, from 2 to 7 June, the qualifying rounds took place involving the 70 candidates of the more than 100 who enrolled, from which the nine finalists were chosen, who competed for 1 ^st, 2 ^nd and 3 ^rd prizes, as well as a special prize awarded by the audience, to the amounts of 900, 600, 300, and 200 euros, respectively.

In a ceremony hosted by David Comas, a researcher at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS), each of the nine candidates, eight from the doctorate in Biomedicine and one from the doctorate in Information and Communication Technologies, presented their research project in the record time of four minutes maximum. This year, the finalists were related to the fields of health and life sciences and the cognitive sciences of language.

Jaume Casals, UPF rector, presented the prizes. The first prize went to Cristina Galusca, who is doing her research in the Reasoning and Infant Cognition (RICO) Research Group at the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), with the presentation " Ull, recorda això!" (Eye remember that).

The second prize went to Álvaro Castells, researcher of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) with " Dinàmica del RNA emprant la microscopia d'alta definició" (RNA dynamics using HD microscopy); the third prize went to Mònica Domínguez and " El discurs prosòdic en la interacció home-màquina" (Prosodic speech in human-machine interaction) carried out at the Natural Language Processing Research Group (TALN) at the DTIC. Finally, the special award by the public went to Carlota Rubio for " Buscant les forces que mouen el càncer" (Searching for the forces that drive cancer), part of the research she performs within the Biomedical Genomics Research Group at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (CEXS).

The jury was comprised of Núria Sebastián, director of the UPF Doctoral School, Emma Rodero, lecturer at the Department of Communication at UPF and Mónica López-Ferrado, scientific journalist with Ara newspaper, who has received several awards for her professional work. As the members of the jury stated: "The high quality of the presentations made the final decision very difficult".

Núria Sebastián emphasized that is "imperative that future researchers include contact with the public in their training" and that the time limitation and the adaptation of the speech to more understandable language were the main difficulties that the candidates had to overcome.

The jury especially evaluated the clarity of each presentation, the context of the research, the degree of detail they were able to achieve in the limited time available, the use of resources and non-verbal language. In addition, the audience became a public jury and voted for the best presentation.

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Rin4, an exercise of scientific dissemination to the non-specialized audience