Tag Archives: people

Meet the Scientists On Tour

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Meet the Scientists On Tour

by Rebecca Jones

Meet the Scientists on Tour 

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 Meet the Scientists on Tour is an initiative that aims to bring science to the public in places they don’t expect it. Activities centre around magnetic whiteboards where the public can spot caterpillars or match parasite to their hosts. The founders, Klara Wanelik, Rebecca Jones, Gabriel Pedra and Beth Levick have been visiting a number of locations in Liverpool and a folk music festival in Newcastleton where events ran 11am to 3pm. Here’s what they had to say about the events:

 

St John’s Shopping Centre

The first event was held at St John’s Shopping Centre on the first Bank Holiday Monday (May 1st) and was a success. We engaged with about 40 people although it was so busy we had to work hard to get people to come over to play our activities. It also didn’t help that people thought we were trying to sell them something! We had some great interactions with people though, with comments from participants including: “I really enjoyed the session”, “Caterpillar game – Thank you!” There were also college students asking about studying biology at the University!

 

Central Station

Our second event was run on Saturday 6th May at Liverpool Central Station and was very well received. The public passing through the station got stuck in: spotting caterpillars, spreading infection and matching parasites to their animal hosts!

We engaged more people than our last even at St John’s Shopping Centre (approx. 50) and were pleasantly surprised by how positive people were about engaging with our science in such a busy place! The majority of our visitors were young children aged 2-10 years. However, parents seemed equally as interested and we also had a few questions about studying at the University.   Comments (from some of our younger participants) included: “I really liked the visit. I hope you come again”, “Really fun and interesting,” and “I liked the games because I learnt things”.

 

New Mersey Retail Park

Our final event in Liverpool was at the New Mersey Retail Park in Speke on the 29th May. The weather wasn’t great so we were very grateful for our gazebo! Due to the weather we engaged with slightly fewer people (approx. 25) but we had people actively coming over to the gazebo upon recognizing either the University of Liverpool or Meet the Scientists logo. We even had a small girl run into the gazebo exclaiming that she wanted play games in the science tent!

Overall we had a brilliant time across our three locations in Liverpool and are keen to go back and take along some new activities. However, we found that we were mostly engaging with families or the elderly and missed out on the middle age bracket.

 

Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival

Our most recent location was up in Newcastleton on the Scottish border, close to Kielder Water and Forest Park. We chose this location as Klara is part of a project sampling field voles in Kielder forest and so she was keen to inform the public about what the team was doing. Additionally, we were interested in taking our activities to a music festival as it was a completely new environment for us to do outreach.

We didn’t know what to expect at the festival but it turned out that we were the only stall there and so were able to monopolize the green in the village. On the Saturday (1st July) there were folk music competitions underway but we were able to engage with a large number of local villagers and visitors from further afield. Over both days (4 hours on the Saturday and 1.5 hours on the Sunday) we engaged with a total of 52 members of the public.

We had some great interactions with people, many of whom approached us out of curiosity about why the University of Liverpool was present in Kielder. We were also able to interact with people from a broader age range – particularly with people in their 20’s and 30’s. We had a few local farmers come over who were particularly interested in our ‘Where does the parasite live’ activity. Our competitive game where people spread infections in populations proved very popular again at this event. Furthermore, lots of people were interested in the work with the voles that Klara was describing. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed carrying out our outreach at the folk music festival which was a very different challenge to the locations in Liverpool. Although, after ceilidh dancing into the morning and being attacked by midges in our tent, we were happy to return to Liverpool for some well-deserved rest!

 

Finally, we would like to say thank you to everyone who helped make ‘Meet the Scientists on Tour’ possible. We’d like to thank the Wellcome Trust for funding us and Laura Winters for her support. We’d also like to thank Vincent Keenan for assisting at the event at Central Station and Steve Paterson for his additional financial (and moral) support. Most importantly, we’d like to thank everyone at the various locations who made it possible (and so enjoyable!) for us to carry out our outreach.

We’re keen to extend our outreach beyond ecology-based activities and so on the 5th July we ran an activity design workshop with attendees from the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Engineering Department and Institute of Translational Medicine. This was a half-day workshop where people had a go at our activities before settling down to design their own. Attendees then had a chance to present their boards, with much discussion in the group. We look forward to welcoming some more activities soon. Watch this space!

 

If you’re interested in designing an activity or want some more information, contact us on twitter at @MTS_OnTour, or by emailing kwanelik@liv.ac.uk.

Postcard from Vienna, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease (ADPD) conference – 2017

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This was a huge display within the conference venue – amazing photography!

Last week three members of IIB, Dr Hannah Davies, James Torpey and Prof. Jerry Turnbull went to Vienna to find out about the latest research and technological advances in the field of neurodegeneration and dementia at ADPD 2017. This five day conference saw over 3000 clinicians, researchers industry specialists from around the globe discuss recent advances in the field, including reports on the latest drug trails, new avenues for treatment and patient perspectives. This busy meeting gave us the opportunity to catch up with colleagues from around the world, and share the exciting research we are doing here at Liverpool with a huge audience.

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The conference venue and an action shot of James presenting his findings at one of the poster sessions

During our stay in Vienna we were treated to welcome reception at Vienna’s beautiful City Hall, we ate traditional Austrian dishes, talked science and enjoyed an impromptu opera performance from one of our colleagues!

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Welcome reception in the impressive Vienna city hall

We came away from the conference, tired but full of new ideas and renewed enthusiasm for our projects.

BES Roadies: Who’s poo?

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by Jo Griffin

We busk a little differently to most people. Having assembled from various locations around the UK, warming up with hot drinks in a pokey central London Starbucks, we play our favourite game. When you check out the next BES Annual Meeting (you know you want to), be sure to keep your eyes peeled for it. It will change your life.

As a BES Roadie, I’ve received public engagement training, helped develop busking activities and had the opportunity to attend music festivals and science festivals across the country. The end goal being to better my science communication skills and inform people outside the world of science on diverse matters such as ecology, and the research I conduct for my PhD.

BES roadies

These activities are great for engaging people and spreading the word of ecology, however, there are communities that we are still struggling to reach. As stated in the BES ‘Making Ecology for All’ report from 2013, members of BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) community are significantly less likely to be in a STEM profession when compared to White counterparts. In 2010/11, BAME individuals made up 16.7% of all biological science students. This is an underrepresentation when compared to both the total for all STEM subjects, 20.1%, and for all subjects, 18.4%. There are no excuses for this gap; in the 21st century I am appalled that recent figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveal that no British University is employing a Black academic in a senior management role. This must change.

Now back to our London ‘Poo Game’ trip. The Windsor Fellowship has collaborated with the Royal Society to provide a mentoring scheme for Year 13 Black students living or studying in Greater London, who are studying STEM subjects. This is where we, the BES Roadies, come into the picture. We were given a one hour slot during a day long workshop, to communicate ecology to the students. Jessica opened the session with a brief introduction to the BES and the importance of science communication. We then split the cohort into four groups and took one group each to demonstrate our busking activities. Karen got to play ‘Pollinator Top Trumps’, Arron had ‘Who’s Poo?’ Jessica was on the ‘Mushroom Game’ and I demonstrated the use of taxonomic keys using the ‘Festival Animals’ busk that we took to Wychwood festival back in June. The students rotated around the different activities before reconvening in the seminar room where I then gave a short talk on my research.

I am used to communicating my work to academics back in my University department and at the odd conference. Entertaining a room of A-level students however, was a pretty terrifying prospect. When I asked if anyone had heard of the term ‘symbiosis’ some students nodded their head with a vague look of recollection whilst others shook their heads. Using examples such as corals, the bobtail squid, nitrogen-fixing bacteria in plant roots and deep sea tube worms, I got the students on board with the concept. Explaining the use of fruit flies and their symbiont to study host-shifts was a little trickier, I was nervous that this was where I might lose them. To my surprise, I was bombarded with questions. From the development and maintenance of symbioses and coevolution to the nitty gritty techniques I used to achieve my work and collect data, these students were the most inquisitive and enthusiastic audience I have ever had. It was an enormous pleasure to spend time with them. If I haven’t persuaded them that parasites and mutualists are just about the coolest things to study, then at least they will have left the session with a broader understanding of the term ecology. I hope that we will continue to engage with a diverse range of communities in the BES and look forward to reuniting with the Roadies for more science communication.

If you would like to become involved with the BES Roadies, please see upcoming public engagement and training events on the BES website: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/learning-and-resources/public-engagement/

IIB photo competition: “people” live blog

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The photos submitted in the “people” category of our competition will be aggregated here.