On Friday February 23rd, we held an ORBYTS meet-up at UCL for our hard-working and talented secondary school scientists. The students came along to UCL to learn more about the Twinkle mission, with which they’re undertaking their research projects.
Eleven of our partner schools attended, meaning we had a packed out lecture theatre of more than 80 school students, teachers and UCL researchers. After a quick tour around UCL, our lead scientist, Professor Giovanna Tinetti, and project manager, Dr Marcell Tessenyi, gave informal and engaging talks to the ORBYTS students and were grilled by a lot of insightful questions from the schools.
This was followed by Jodie Connon from UCL’s widening participation department discussed the process in applying for University. Then the event closed with an informal Q & A panel of our undergrad and post-grad students and a post-doctoral scientist (Maria Niculescu-Duvas, Tom James, Sian Brannon and Dr Jon Holdship), who answered pupils questions about everything from diversity in physics to active scientific research to life in University halls.
A huge thank you to all our ORBYTS tutors, speakers, ORBYTS school scientists and their teachers for making the event such a huge success. We very much look forward to seeing the schools present their results at our ORBYTS conference in July.
Schools in attendance:
- Highams Park School
- Highgate School
- London Academy of Excellence Tottenham
- Alexandra Park School
- Beal High School
- Forest School
- London Academy of Excellence Stratford
- Hammersmith Academy
- Wimbledon High School
- Tiffin Girls School
- The Robert Napier School
This blog post has been written by EduTwinkle and ORBYTS Coordinator, Will Dunn.
The ORBYTS 2018 students visit UCL. Credit: Mark Fuller.
Will Dunn welcomes the 2018 cohort of ORBYTS students to UCL. Credit: Mark Fuller.
Twinkle’s Science Lead, Prof Giovanna Tinetti, explains Twinkle’s mission to characterise the atmospheres of exoplanets. Credit: Mark Fuller.
Twinkle’s Project Manager, Dr Marcell Tessenyi, gives an overview of the mission. Credit: Mark Fuller.
The ORBYTS 2018 students visit UCL. Credit: Mark Fuller.