I would like more kids to enjoy science, and pursue it as a career. I am particularly keen to get more girls into STEM fields while improving career opportunities in science for women of all ages. Women are not the only under-represented group in science so I work on several outreach programs that provide all students with the tools to progress into higher education
These are the SRMP 2019-2020 kids, learning how to build and use galileoscopes. I run SRMP at Harvard and MIT, where local high-school students spend a year learning how to be scientists, collaborating on original astrophysical research with junior scientists, and eventually presenting their work to the scientific community (and getting paid $1500 each!). Learn all about it here.
ORBYTS is my pride and joy. It stands for Original Research By Young Twinkle Students. When I was the educational co-ordinator for the Twinkle Space Mission I created EduTwinkle - a series of educational projects for kids of all ages. ORBYTS was its most ambitious project. Together with three young scientists and fifteen high school students, I organized teams to research molecules of astronomical interest. The kids' hard work and superb intelligence led to research that I am proud to publish, and now we have expanded to a dozen schools with hundreds of students.
These are the ORBYTS kids during the opening event at UCL. Seven of them are now published authors - look at this and this. These students then became mentors to the following year’s cohort, and now there are many other research articles in preparation, with the new ORBYTS kids as co-authors.
I am also the director of the JURA program, where students in their last years of high-school or first years of college are trained to collaborate with scientists on small research projects. Meet the JURA team here.
The best scientists can explain their work to anyone. I worked on an ad campaign making that exact point.
While teaching at Highams Park School I worked with a group of girls to research how space affects plant seeds. Over several weeks we grew rocket (aka arugula) seedlings in a controlled experiment. The results from this UK wide project will be published soon. Here's the Guardian talking about it.
I also do career focused outreach. I have been to primary schools many times where I talk to the tiny ones. Sometimes I also talk to older students who are about to make big decisions such as whether or not to go to university.