PhD Students Partake in a four-day Outreach at the Green Man Festival

Students from the CDT in Advanced Therapeutics and Nanomedicines and other UCL School of Pharmacy PhD students carried out public engagement activities at the Green Man Festival. The festival attracted over 20,000 people, all from a variety of backgrounds with a love for the performance arts and science. The science segment of the festival is found at the appropriately named Einstein’s Garden.  Here, many UK universities display the best science has to offer both to promote and increase public understanding of the STEM fields and also to encourage the future generations to entertain pursuing scientific studies.

The Outreach Team spent four days in the heart of the beautiful Brecon Beacon mountains in Wales and offered a variety of interactive science activities to all ages. Our stall included numerous activities and exhibitions such as slime-making activities where the process of how particular slimes are made was explained in a fun way. Next, a second stand explained the use of hydrogels in medical research.  Using alginate as our model hydrogel/slime, festivalgoers were able to make colourful and magnetic “slime worms and spheres” which we then explained could be used to deliver drugs and cells to the body.  The children had a hands-on experience making these and the accompanying explanations were tailored to the ages of the different audience members.

The final two stands of our stall included the use of “slime” in day-to-day medicines like gaviscon.  Again, festivalgoers were able to have a hands-on experience and observe how this medicine works in the stomach and how it can improve the symptoms of heart burn and indigestion. The final activity was a display of 3D-printed artefacts such as model organs and ball-and-socket joints, as well as, fun figurines and even a bust of Einstein himself! This array of 3D-printed objects was used to explain the process of 3D printing and how it applies to modern day life with a particular focus on biomedical engineering applications.

A fun time was had by all!