Since 2019 we have built courses for students in Chemistry, Medicine, Medical Biosciences, Mechanical Engineering and Executive Education, plus an I-Explore module, an MSc Cleantech Innovation project and a range of outreach and community events. We have also taught internationally with the Technical University of Munich. Together these reach around 1,000 students a year.
Each course shares the same design, but is shaped to the skills, stage and subject of the students taking it.
The courses
Chemical Kitchen
Our first and flagship course brings new chemistry undergraduates into the lab through cooking. Students work through experiments that mirror a real chemistry lab: following a protocol to make tofu, designing a way to cook the perfect egg yolk, and exploring molecular gastronomy. All the while, they learn to work safely and keep careful records. They finish by cooking a dish from the tofu they made.
Medical Kitchen
The Medical Kitchen helps second-year medical students over the skills gap they meet at the start of clinical training, and shows them how to learn a practical skill. They practise careful knife work, turning vegetables in the classic French way, alongside suturing a silicone pad. Then they reflect on the parallels, and on the challenge of performing delicate work in front of their peers.
Biomedical Kitchen
A version of Chemical Kitchen for first-year Medical Biosciences students, shaped around the skills they need next. Students learn to work in a clean, orderly way by designing a yoghurt experiment, handle delicate gels for the first time, and use molecular gastronomy to make a set of identical canapés.
Mechanical Kitchen
Built with colleagues in Mechanical Engineering, this course gives third-year students low-stakes practice in designing experiments.
Science, Cooking and Performance (I-Explore)
A 10-week I-Explore module open to undergraduates from across the College, developed with the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein. Students work in mixed teams, build a sense of agency, and think of themselves as "performers" while developing a sustainable food product.
MSc Cleantech Innovation project
A project module on sustainable food systems, designed and taught with Design Engineering and the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein. Postgraduate students take on a real sustainable-food challenge, combining food innovation with engineering design.
Executive Education and beyond
We adapt the same approach for senior leaders, using cooking tasks to help them examine how they collaborate and innovate. It takes the model well beyond the undergraduate classroom.
Community and outreach
Because everyone has a relationship with food, the kitchen is a natural way to bring science to the public, in person and online. Our World of Food workshops, funded by the President's Excellence Fund, invite staff and students to share their cultures through food, supporting equality, diversity and inclusion, and Imperial's values of collaboration and respect. The facility also hosts regular community events, and we help colleagues across the College run food-based science communication, including at the Great Exhibition Road Festival.