Tegan a two-time science winner

New Scientist Prize for Science Writing winner Tegan Dolstra.

ANU students have taken out first, second and third prizes in this year’s New Scientist Prize for Science Writing, with top honours going to science student Tegan Dolstra for the second year in a row.

Tegan won first prize- and $1500 -for her piece Cents and Sensibility: powering our cities into the future, which looked at the importance of realistic environmental goals and the influence of the economy. Second prize was won by Arwen Cross for the article Putting a Stop to Deadly Diarrhoea, while third prize was taken by Emma Lawrance for a piece called The Biggest Experiment in History about the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

Tegan - a regular contributor to ANU Reporter - said that she was delighted to win the prize.

"I’m very pleased to have won," she said. "I really love science writing and I had a great time writing this article, so it’s great to be recognised.

"I went a bit out of my biology comfort zone and did a piece on trigeneration - the simultaneous production of electricity, hot water and cold water. It’s cheaper, cleaner and more efficient than coal power and the City of Sydney is planning to adopt it next year."

This year’s New Scientist Prize for Science Writing attracted more than 60 entries from all around Australia. This year the selection panel was Karl Kruszelnicki, Georgina Howden-Chitty and Ed Sykes from the Australian Science Media Centre and Sumit Paul-Chourhury and Lucy Dunwell from New Scientist. Tegan Dolstra’s winning article will be published on the New Scientist website: http://newscientistprize.org/