Friday, 25 February 2022 Tilen Genov received the Prometheus of Science Award for Excellence in Communication
The Slovene Science Foundation has announced this year's recipients of the Prometheus of Science Awards for Excellence in Communication, which has been awarded since 2003. Among them is Assist. Tilen Genov from the Department of Biodiversity at UP FAMNIT.
Tilen Genov
As the pioneer of scientific research and study of marine mammals in Slovenia, Tilen Genov is also the founder and president of the Morigenos society, and has been leading and directing its activities for two decades.
Morigenos – Slovenian Marine Mammal Society is an independent, scientific, non-profit, non-governmental organisation that combines scientific research, monitoring, education, public awareness, capacity building and management, to achieve effective conservation of the marine environment and biodiversity.
The scientific publications of the Morigenos Society are an important contribution to the science of marine mammals internationally and and Morigenos team members are actively participating in several research projects and organisations all over the world, for example the European Cetacean Society. Besides that, Morigenos is the only Slovenian organization with the status of a partner organization to ACCOBAMS (Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Neighbouring Atlantic Area), of which Slovenia is a contracting party.
Although the beginnings of his research were not easy, Tilen Genov made an important contribution to raising awareness and educating the general public on this topic. “It started with a great deal of curiosity. There is a lot of doubt and disbelief on the part of others, including the profession. No funding, no serious support, no one at the time believed that someone in Slovenia could seriously deal with this and develop the matter, not even some 'kid' (I was still a high school student at the time). It literally started by taking the train or hitchhiking to the coast, equipped only with my grandfather’s binoculars. I slept in hostels or even on the boats of some people who came towards me. Long hours of staring at the sea from different hills and occasional going out to sea with a fisherman or individuals who saw something good in it. I remember how people laughed at me when I told them we were trying to study dolphins here. The general perception was that these animals do not exist in our country. that they appear occasionally,” Tilen Genov said in an interview with the Regional Obala portal.
Receiving the award, he emphasized the importance of the contribution of new scientific findings at the global level: “For example, the temporal separation of dolphin social groups, which we have described in our country, is unique at the global level. We have also developed a new method of identifying dolphins by faces, which is also a novelty at the global level."
The full interview in Slovene is published here.
Congratulations!
