Blog | Babraham Institute

15/05/2018

A Race against the Clock?

With five months down and two months left to create the ‘Race Against the Ageing Clock’ exhibit for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2018, how is it progressing? We check in with Esther, the Institute’s Public Engagement Officer, to find out.

ageing clock | epigenetics | public engagement | royal society | science festivals

20/04/2018

Looking back and thinking ahead – how student engagement in research is spreading

As sixth-form students at Sophianum School finish their projects and present their ideas, Michael Hinton, who coordinates the project, looks back on the year and describes how the collaboration will expand in 2019.

animals in science | epigenetics | secondary schools

By Michael Hinton

20/04/2018

Parliament’s POST notes for Policy

The cutting-edge, fundamental scientific research being performed at the Babraham Institute impacts on a range of policy areas. Parliamentarians often look for researchers to engage with and to inform policy decisions. In this blog Prof. Wolf Reik talks about his recent policy engagement with the Parliament Office of Science and Technology (POST).

parliamentary office of science and technology | policy engagement | post

By Wolf Reik

17/04/2018

Race Against the Ageing Clock – from training to practice

As part of the development of our new exhibit, Race Against the Ageing Clock, researchers Dil and Jo visited the Royal Society, London, in March for some insightful training on engagement through the use of exhibit activities, before putting their new skills into practice at the Cambridge Science Festival.

epigenetics | royal society | ageing clock | cambridge science festival

10/04/2018

Co-creation and Public Dialogues in research and innovation – A workshop for the ORION project

Emma Martinez muses on how a workshop organised as part of the ORION project shed some light onto involving different audiences in creating new value in research and innovation processes.

open science | orion | public dialogue | co-creation

29/03/2018

Genome Editing – How far should we go? A Cambridge Science Festival event

On the 13^th of March the Babraham Institute organised the discussion event “Genome Editing – How far should we go?”. Carolyn Rogers, a 1^st year PhD student in Anne Corcoran's group, was one of the Institute’s researchers facilitating the table discussions.

26/03/2018

Climate Reality Leadership Training

In our latest KEC blog post, post-doctoral researcher Jo Durgan, part of the Florey group, steps out of the lab to discuss climate change and her work across the Institute as a Climate Reality Leader.

By Joanne Durgan

16/03/2018

Passion, enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge at Schools’ Day

Jo Montgomery, a member of the Babraham Bioinformatics group, describes how Schools’ Day projects bring out the best in scientists and students

schools day | schools | secondary schools

By Jo Montgomery

01/02/2018

Cambridge Academy for Science & Technology students find inspiration for their investigations

The ‘Protein Challenge’ project at the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology combines an introduction to key molecular biology techniques and practical lab-based sessions to assay protein activity. Here the students tell us more about what they got up to on their recent visit to the Institute to learn more about our research and facilities

By Guest Blogger

31/01/2018

The excitement of science communication

In November, as part of 360 Science, we invited science author and broadcaster Kat Arney to visit the Institute to talk about her career and offer tips on getting started in communications. Here PhD student Christina Courreges reflects on Kat’s presentation and what she took away from it.

communication | phd student | training | science communication | women in science

17/01/2018

St Faith’s trip to the Babraham Institute

A class of year 6 children from St. Faith's School recently visited the Imaging Facility on campus to learn more about cells. They were thrilled to see the microscopes and detailed images that we can take on them. They also used the microscopes we have as resource for our public engagement programme to look at a range of slides and the nematode worm C.elegans. We received a wonderful thank you letter from each child which highlighted how much they had enjoyed the afternoon.

imaging-facility | primary

By Guest Blogger

10/01/2018

Let’s create an exhibition

In November the Institute heard it was successful in the competitive selection to showcase its upcoming exhibition, the “Race Against the Ageing Clock”, at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London this summer. Esther van Vliet, Public Engagement Officer, is part of the exhibit development team and shares here how work has begun on the creation of the exhibit.

ageing clock | royal society | epigenetics

03/01/2018

Learning to talk about my research

Chiara Pantarelli, a 3^rd year PhD student in Heidi Welch's group at the Babraham Institute took part in a recent Media Training day to help her to build her skills in talking to a wide audience about her research.

phd student | training

25/12/2017

Engagement Highlights 2017!

At this special festive time, Tacita Croucher, the Institute's Public Engagement Manager reflects on the public engagement work our staff and students have been organising and participating in this year.

20/12/2017

ORION @ENGAGE - Esther's baptism of fire!

About a month ago Esther van Vliet joined the Public Engagement team at the Babraham Institute as a maternity cover to work on the ORION project, a Horizon2020 European Commission funded project that aims to explore new ways to open up the way the Institute does research. Her baptism of fire happened last week at the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s annual conference ENGAGE.

co-creation | open science | orion

20/12/2017

ENGAGE 2017 – collaboration and inspiration

Michael Hinton muses on the ENGAGE Conference, run by the National Coordinating Council for Public Engagement

conference | public engagement | training

By Michael Hinton

13/12/2017

A match made on campus

The Babraham Institute’s basic science benefits in a very real sense from the Institute's proximity to a number of industry-leading biotechnology companies on the Babraham Research Campus. In this blog Rahul Roychoudhuri tells us about a developing partnership between our Immunology Programme and Cancer Research UK Therapeutic Discovery Laboratories.

babraham research campus | collaborative research | industry

08/12/2017

Launching Challenge Projects in the Netherlands

Alex Harvey, an Animal Technician in the Institute’s animal unit (BSU) describes how she joined Boo Virk (a postdoc in the Casanueva Group) and Dori Horkai (a PhD student in the Houseley Group) and the Public Engagement team's Michael Hinton in the third year of a collaboration with Sophianum School in the Netherlands.

29/11/2017

The stars of SymBLS

The Babraham Institute’s Symposium for Biological Life Sciences (SymBLS) for early career researchers is a well established forum for Life Science graduates across Cambridge. This year’s organising committee share their thoughts on the 2017 event and give us a ‘behind the scenes’ look at what it takes to run this excellent event.

21/11/2017

Campus collaboration leads to further investment

Becky Gilley, a post doc in the Cook lab is the latest KEC blog contributor. Becky has been involved in a Babraham Research Campus Collaboration Fund (BRCCF) project which has gone from strength to strength. Her blog tells us why the BRCCF has been critical in securing further funding and what this collaborative research project has meant to her.

babraham research campus | collaborative research | industry

By Rebecca Gilley

21/11/2017

Pipetting Workshop at Newmarket Academy Science Club

John Pascall, who is a regular contributor to the Babraham Institute's Public Engagement activities, describes the challenges of going back to school at Newmarket Academy.

science club | secondary schools

15/11/2017

The importance of knowledge exchange in political engagement

James Tooze, Policy Officer at the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), takes up the reigns in this latest KEC post. In his guest blog, James tells us about the partnership between CaSE and the Babraham Institute and explains why scientists’ engagement in policy is so important.

partner | policy

09/11/2017

From Barcelona to Babraham

In our third and final Innovative Training Network (ITN) KEC Blog series, we hear from visiting PhD student Piotr Kobiałka on his recent knowledge exchange visit to the Babraham Institute. Piotr is a PhD student in Dr Mariona Graupera’s lab in IDIBELL (Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge) in Barcelona. He tells us why this visit helped his research and why researcher mobility is so important to advance scientific programmes:

phd student | pi3k | innovative training network

By Piotr Kobialka

31/10/2017

Making our Mark at Big Biology Day

Prof. Wolf Reik, Associate Director of the Babraham Institute and Head of the Epigenetics Research Programme was part of a team of scientists who took a new exhibit on Epigenetics to Big Biology Day at Hills Road Sixth Form College in October.

epigenetics | nuclear dynamics | public | science festivals | sixth form

By Wolf Reik