(Vienna, 26 July 2010) The rush for places at MedUni Vienna also includes the youngest people. Most of the 92 lectures at the Children's Medical University were already fully booked just a few days after registration began, and with a total attendance of 5,732 the lectures in the large lecture halls at MedUni Vienna were even taken to their limit in terms of capacity.
The Vienna Children's University has grown continuously since it was founded in 2003 and this year broke a new record with lectures at the Vienna universities – the University of Vienna, the Vienna University of Technology (TU), MedUni Vienna and the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU): there were 1,000 participating children in the first year and this became 4,002 this summer. The young students created their timetables entirely according to their own individual interests from the wide range of specialist scientific fields and interdisciplinary subjects. These ranged from environmental and energy issues, questions of healthcare and communication on to language and culture.
At the Medical University of Vienna most of the 92 lectures of the Children's Medical University were already fully booked just a few days after registration began. The seminars, workshops and lectures on the foundations of medicine, clinical medicine, health sciences and prevention, and history of medicine had an attendance of 5,732 in the end. In small groups there were, for example, "Basic and advanced courses in surgery" and "A look into the stomach", in lectures like "Cell City – what's going on in the cell" doctors used films, pictures and models to explain what it looks like inside the human body and how it works. It is often not the case in the children's everyday school lives, but here there was focus on passion to discover and research, visual learning and clear and vivid insights into science and practice. At the Children's Medical University the young researchers were allowed to playfully acquire knew knowledge and ask all of their burning questions. The kids, with their thirst for knowledge, were very happy to be there!
In 2010 it became very clear that science does not work isolated in the proverbial ivory tower. The Children's University of Vienna would not exist without curious children and creative and innovative scientists, without the organisation by the Children's Office of the University of Vienna and the commitment of the participating universities, or the support of funding bodies like the Federal Ministry for Science and Research, the City of Vienna, the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection, the European Commission, A1, Wien Kanal, Erste Bank, IBM and other sponsors.
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