Public Engagement - May 2024

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By Sarah-Jane Judge

Tattoo my Science

Summer festival season is upon us, and Tattoo my Science is proving as big a hit as always with the public. Over 600 Falkirk Science Festival goers at Zetland Park in Grangemouth and Helix Park (home of the Kelpies) queued up to get henna and transfer tattoos from Lucy Remnant (Earnshaw lab), Willow Rolls (Wilson lab), Haomiao Cheng (Hardwick lab), Jeraldine Weber (Welburn lab), Wei Huang (Cheerambathur lab) and Tiasha Ghosh (Marston lab).

Public Engagement is still looking for volunteers for the Tattoo my Science festival events, especially the locals Meadows festival on the 1st and 2nd June. Email Sarah-Jane if you’d like to get involved.

Royal Society Schools Visit

In April, the Public Engagement team completed its Royal Society funded partnership with three Midlothian schools, where students had been set the challenge of investigating “which fruit has the most DNA?”. In these third and final visits, the primary 6 students presented their findings, in the form of impressively accurate and thorough research posters, to Principal Investigators Bill Earnshaw and Hiro Ohkura, and Hwei Ling Tan (Heun/JP lab). The students found that they were able to extract the most DNA from strawberries (fresh over frozen) over kiwis and dragonfruit. The class that extracted the most DNA was awarded a digital microscope with built in screen, with smaller prizes for individual groups at each school.

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Public Engagement Grant Awarded to Lucy Remnant

The success of the partnership scheme was recognised by the Royal Society who invited us to develop a proposal for additional funding which would allow us to expand the project into more schools. We are delighted to say that this proposal, “DNA Hunters, a Chromosome Quest for New Researchers”, headed by Dr Lucy Remnant, has had funding approved for £30,000 allowing to enable us to work with primary, secondary and SEN schools in West Lothian and Midlothian. This project will kick off in August this year with lots of opportunities for researchers to get involved either visiting schools or helping in centre prepping experiments and handling the students samples.