Students win President's awards for Excellence in Societal Engagement

CDT-TSM students win President's awards for Excellence in Societal Engagement

The President’s Award for Excellence in Societal Engagement are annual awards to recognise and reward Imperial College staff, students and community partners who have delivered excellence in schools engagement, community engagement, engagement with research or patient engagement. This year, two of the five President’s Awards were given to students of the CDT in Theory and Simulation of Materials: Beth Rice won the Student Award for Societal Engagement and the Pint of Science team, including Chris Ablitt and Robert Charlton, won The Inspirational Partner Award for Societal Engagement.

Beth is the founder, architect and organizer of a Science Club for girls aged 6 to 11 that runs at the Baytree Centre in Brixton. The goal of this club is to encourage girls to develop an interest in science and to develop scientific thinking. For this, Beth focuses on do-it-yourself, home science experiments designed to introduce girls to scientific ideas and to encourage them to be curious about the world around them. Due to the success of the Science Club for the 6-11 age group, Beth has recently started a second Science Club for the 11-13 age group, which has proven equally popular.

The Pint of Science team is organizing the Pint of Science festival that aims to communicate contemporary scientific developments to the general public in an interesting, engaging and approachable way by bringing scientists to the pub. The festival takes place annually in May and covers all aspects of science. In every year since the festival's creation in 2012, various students from TSM-CDT have been involved in organising at least one of the Imperial events. In 2016, the festival took place in approximately 100 cities in 12 countries across 5 continents and was awarded the Points of Lights Prize by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Congratulations to Beth, Chris and Rob for this fantastic and well deserved achievement!