The first prize was awarded to Olympia Agalioti, a bright young medical student at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, whose presentation was entitled The Brain and … Coma Situations. Olympia related the true story of a coma patient who made a complete recovery several years after falling into a coma thanks to the continuous brain cell stimulation provided by family members. Olympia discussed the differences between brain death and comas and used a model of a brain as a prop.

YouTube Video - Watch Olympia Agalioti at the Cheltenham Science Festival in June 2008.

To find out more about Olympia, read the interview she gave to Eleftheros Typos (PDF, 209 KB).

Christina Melidou, another Thessaloniki-based finalist, won second prize with her talk on tectonic plates and their role in the earth’s evolution.

Our third prize winner was another doctor-to-be, this time from Athens, Tania Valeonti, who gave a presentation on DNA.

The Audience Award went to Manos Apostolakis, who talked about the five senses (or is it thirteen?) in a humorous presentation using wordplay and puns on imaginary quarrels with his wife.