Education and Outreach Grant recipients

In 2019, Ruth organised and ran a drop-in Microbial-Art family workshop to celebrate British Science Week, exploring microbes in line with the 'Our Diverse Planet' topic. 

"I organised a free event focusing on the amazing and diverse microscopic world. Through this, I was able to engage youngsters in the rural community in and around Great Torrington with practical microbiology, and give people access to equipment they may not have at school or home."

Image credit: Ruth MacLaren

In 2018, Emily was awarded an Education and Outreach Grant to support the ‘Dive for Antibiotics’ initiative which engages local divers in the search for novel bioactive metabolites.

"Receiving a Microbiology Society Outreach grant has enabled me to run the 'Dive for Antibiotics' outreach project, which works to engage members of the public, particularly divers, with science and microbiology. Through this project I have been highly involved in public outreach, improving my confidence, scientific communication and public speaking skills, as well as skills necessary for organising and running an outreach project. Furthermore, I have become adept at techniques and with research tools that I would otherwise have not had the reason or opportunity to use in my PhD."

Image credit: Emily Addington

Naji was awarded a grant to fund activities at the “Life at the Extremes” stall at the BlueDot festival.

"These activities showed visitors the diversity of micro-organisms on Earth, and gave them a new perspective away from the focus on microbiology and human health. These activities also developed my ability to communicate scientific information to audience of different ages and backgrounds, using different forms and tools of communication. They also showed me different points of view on using extremophilic microbes for industry development. I also learned to manage a small grant and organise an event."

Image credit: Naji Bassil

Sabastine was awarded a grant to support his outreach project, ‘Be aware of Infectious Disease Epidemic’ (BIDE), in Ghana, which aimed to demonstrate to school children how an infectious disease outbreak can be diagnosed and managed within a community.

"The Education & Outreach Grant helped me to provide basic experiment-based science education to some selected basic schools in Accra and Eastern Region. From the outreach which was themed “Beware of Infectious Disease Epidemic’, most rewarding was that I was able to reduce complex education in infectious diseases and their spread to simple information that school pupils could easily comprehend. It has also helped me to devise new approaches to sharing information in my field to non-experts. I also had the opportunity to interact with local scientist Ghana from the Vacation Initiatives in Science, Africa (VISA)."

Image credit: Sabastine Arthur

Catrin was awarded a grant to support her project 'Living Light', which brought together experts from across the arts and sciences to generate an unique and interactive display at Wales’s largest welsh language cultural festival, the National Eisteddfod (6-10 August 2018).

“The education and outreach grant I received from the Microbiology Society enabled me to build links across disciplinary boundaries and present my research involving bioluminescent bacteria to children in a fun, engaging and immersive way.” 

Image credit: Catrin Williams

In 2017, Melissa was awarded an Outreach Grant to organise the project 'Why does food go off?', which aimed to educate young people (KS2 and KS5 pupils) as to why food waste is a global concern and why food goes off from a microbiological perceptive.

"This grant was great fun and has allowed me to build collaborations with local schools and develop outreach activities. This lead me to set up a STEM ambassador's scheme within my department to give undergraduate and post graduate students the opportunity to undertaken science communication activities. Several of my PhD students have since gone on to apply for their own outreach grants. I am now in a position to start writing research papers on the public engagement of science and apply for larger grants for more ambitious outreach projects."

Image credit: Melissa Lacey

Carla was awarded funds to support her education and outreach project 'The Bacteria Commonwealth Games: Resistance is Futile!'. 

"The Microbiology Society Education and Outreach grant helped me get started on my entrepreneurial journey during my PhD. Using the funding I worked with game developers to prototype a gaming app on AMR which was evaluated with young people in Scotland and UK. This evidenced to me the benefits of gaming for education and behaviour change and eventually led me to start a company dedicated to this methodology called Game Doctor."

Image credit: Carla Brown