Greenlight4Girls Day a success

The first ever Greenlight4Girls day at Imperial College London saw 200 twelve - sixteen year old school take control of the Blackett Laboratory.

The first ever Greenlight4Girls day at Imperial College London saw 200 twelve - sixteen year old school take control of the Blackett Laboratory. Supported by Imperial College’s Outreach team, a group of postgraduate Women in Physics (Jess Wade, Zan Paterson, Gwen Wyatt-Moon and Nilushi Wijeyasinghe) welcomed the students for a day of industry and academic-led lectures, seminars and experiments.

Over 350 students applied to attend the day from schools across the UK. The amount of support for this kind of activity was staggering, resulting in Imperial College partnering with a range of the world’s most learned institutes. The workshops spanned the campus, capital and country, covering the themes of the sky, human body, energy and materials, technology, engineering and communicating science. Oxford’s Women in Physics Group took on the topic of particle physics, the Solar Spark printed raspberry solar cells and Bletchley Park showed the girls how to crack an enigma machine. There were two Royal Astronomical Society workshops, one explaining the scale of the universe using a toilet roll and one showing how you can fit a pop-up planetarium into a lecture theatre in Huxley. The girls made LED torches with the IET, spent an hour coding with CISCO and learnt about making planes fly with Intel McAfee Security. Imperial’s own postgrads ran their own science fun lab, calculating the speed of light by melting cheese in a microwave and making cornstarch dance on amplifiers. We had neuroscientists to teach us about tricks of the eye; the Royal Society of Chemistry introducing us to hydrogels and postdocs extracting DNA from strawberries.The Head of Student Recruitment gave the girls insider knowledge on admissions and the girls made their own science podcasts with Imperial’s Communications team. 

These young scientists were excited: queues of curiosity snaking their through the lobby and onto Prince Consort Road. The girls spent an hour meeting each other, eating breakfast, decorating their CISCO sponsored lab coats and taking photos of each other in the first ever Physics Photo Booth. The girls streamed into LT1 and we were welcomed by the Imperial College team and Greenlight4Girls CEO. We were lucky enough to hear from Dr. Emily Mayhew, the bioengineering department’s resident historian. Dr. Mayhew is just about everyone’s favourite speaker at the moment, and the girls were buzzing as she enthusiastically recounted the lives of the scientists during the war. The girls moved around Blackett in groups of 10 and spent lunchtime between the level 8 balcony and the Photo Booth, making friends and speaking to their group leaders- all current Imperial College students and staff who came to work on the weekend to be part of such an exciting project. The closing lectures were given by Lucinda Sallom-Allum, encouraging the girls to stay determined and use their talent for whatever good causes they want. Professor Sara Rankin wowed the girls with her non-linear high-impact career- the girls all realising how important it was to be themselves and never stop asking questions. 

The girls left laden with treats from the collaborators and supporters; from RSC periodic tables to Raspberry Pi stickers to Intel USBs and Google stress balls. They were all super inspired: all of them wanted to study science and all of them wanted to study it at Imperial College. The young women took to social media to express their delight: 

“Don't let anyone or anything hold you back. Be brave and remember that science and engineering are as much a girls' world as a boys' one. Be creative, explore and discover- there's a world out there to find!”

“It was an amazing experience, so much time and effort was put in to make it wonderful. There were many interesting and useful lectures as well as many other activities such as the photo booth. The experience as a whole was very enjoyable.”

“Science is not a boys subject, and now is the best time to be a women in science.”

“One of the best memories I have and will definitely cherish for years to come.”

Whilst the parents e-mailed to thank the students for running the event as their daughters stepped foot in the door!

The Department of Physics is changing; with the percentage of female undergraduates increasing annually and a public engagement programme with the right idea- to continue to do the best research in the world, we’re going to need all the talent we can get. 

An extra special thanks goes out from Jess, Zan, Gwen and Nilushi to Mel, Claire, Annalisa, Rebecca and Singe from the Outreach Office. We’d have achieved none of this without you. Additionally, Jess will never stop being amazed by Simon Foster’s ideas and enthusiasm- THANK YOU!