St Michael's School Fair
St Michael's Church of England High School Science Fair
Natalie Koch
Centre for Proteome Research,
University of Liverpool
www.liv.ac.uk/cpr
On Friday 15th March, Rosie Maher and I attended St Michaels Church of England High School for their yearly science fair.
The morning session began with both of us giving presentations explaining our personal journeys towards a PhD to a group of year 9 female students.
Rosie presented first and began by explaining what a PhD is as many of the students hadn’t heard of a PhD. Rosie followed by talking about her journey from leaving school to starting her PhD. Rosie also highlighted extracurricular activities and work experience that helped her obtain her PhD position and that this is something the students could start thinking about now for their future. Rosie went on to talk about her current research as a PhD student and explained how she is helping to develop a diagnostic test for people with reflux aspiration using proteomics and mass spectrometry.
I presented next, describing my own journey from school to becoming a PhD student including my time spent volunteering abroad. I explained what my PhD entails and how I am using a new technique to extract information from faeces to help with population monitoring of small mammals. I also highlighted what else we do as PhD students away from the lab including publishing papers, presenting posters and talks, attending conferences and developing new skills. I then went on to ex plain what potential careers paths other than academic research are available after studying a STEM degree, in particular studying biology. The students were then able to ask us questions. I believe they were particularly encouraged to know they did not have to excel in every scientific topic they covered in class to be able to pursue a career in science.
They were also reassured that Rosie and I had experienced setbacks on our journeys towards a PhD! We emphasised that we did not know everything about our particular field of research before starting our respective PhDs. We explained that we are still constantly learning, and that this is the main theme of a PhD- to learn new skills and techniques! We explained that both of us have followed our passions and that has taken us to where we are now and we would encourage them to do the same!
The poster prize winner!
During the afternoon session, Rosie and I took part in judging poster presentations at the science fair along with the help of a previous winner. Around 20 students from year 8 to year 11 volunteered to present a poster on a scientific topic of their choosing. The posters were displayed around the school hall, as you would see at a scientific conference! The students’ parents also attended and were able to walk around the hall viewing the posters and asking the students questions about their chosen topic. As judges, we were asked to mark each student out of five on their presentation skills, knowledge of their topic and poster creativity. We viewed the posters separately, approaching each student who then presented their poster and answered any questions we had. After all of the posters had been marked we collectively chose three winning students for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The winners were those who showed a high level of passion and knowledge for their respective topics.
The winner’s topics included the effect of mobile phones on our brain and eyes, current advances in biotechnology and how artificial intelligence works. Overall, it was a very successful day and Rosie and I very much enjoyed encouraging and engaging with the next generation of scientists.