Brussels science ambassador Prof. Lesley De Cruz wins the 2026 EMS Outreach & Communication Award for a climate workshop using AI and LEGO®
The 2026 EMS Outreach & Communication Award has been awarded to the workshop “Instant AI Urban Climate Modelling and LEGO®”, an initiative by Prof. Dr Lesley De Cruz and her research team.
In this interactive workshop, participants discover how cities heat up and how smart urban planning can help to cool them down. Using LEGO bricks, they build their own miniature city, which is then scanned in a temperature booth and analysed by an AI-driven climate model. This allows participants to see immediately how their choices and elements such as trees, parks and green roofs influence the temperature in their city.
Since its launch at the I Love Science festival, the project has reached thousands of children, families and science enthusiasts. The initiative has also received recognition at international scientific conferences and has previously won the Science Communication Prize from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts and the Young Academy. Professor De Cruz also held a dedicated TEDx talk .
The project is a collaboration between researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Ghent University and the Karel de Grote Hogeschool.
With this award, the EMS highlights the importance of innovative forms of climate communication that bring together science, technology and public participation. The project demonstrates how complex climate challenges can be made both understandable and inspiring for a wide audience.
The prize will be presented during the EMS Annual Meeting 2026 in Utrecht on 7 September 2026.