A sunny weekend in May saw the College open its doors to alumni, staff, students and the public for the inaugural Imperial Festival and Bioengineering was out in force!

Festival fever

The Imperial Festival provided around 7000 visitors with the opportunity for a glimpse behind the scenes, to find out about our research and see our union clubs and societies showcase their talents too. They were treated to a pop-up surgery simulation, pints with professors, belly dancing, street entertainment, Japanese drumming, as well as hands-on demonstrations by Imperial researchers.

Bioengineering inspires!

The Department was there in force and was represented by PhD students Ben Reeves and Felix Jonas, the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies and 2nd year Bioengineering undergraduates who were present as part of a larger exhibit by the Rio Tinto Sports Innovation Challenge and who demonstrated their Paralympic equipment prototypes from the Mechanics Design Projects course. The Festival was also used to launch a new book; ‘Enabled - The Rio Tinto Sports Innovation Challenge Story’, which describes some of the activities of the project so far. Dr Sandra Shefelbine gave a well-received public lecture explaining how the everyday loads we place on our bones affect their growth and shape, while Dr Rob Dickinson was part of iHealth at the pop-up surgery. iHealth aims to use information technology to develop optimised patient management pathways.

Sunshine and success

One of the organisers, Natasha Martineau, Head of Research Communications, said: “Imperial’s first Festival went better than many of us dared to imagine, with hundreds of staff welcoming thousands of visitors to the event. Around each corner there was yet another opportunity to discover something new about the work of the College. We’re very grateful to everyone who made it all possible, and of course to the sunshine, which made a big contribution to the festival atmosphere on campus this weekend.”

Thank you!

A massive thank you to everyone in the Department who helped to make our part in the Festival such a huge success. A slideshow as well as tweets and photos from the Festival’s Storify stream can be found in Reporter.