SuperBugZone, Imperial Festival 2017

For the third year running, CMBI students, post-docs and staff participated in the very successful SuperBugZone.

They were joined by researchers from the Departments of Life Sciences and Medicine, and groups from across the College working under the Antimicrobial Research Collaborative (ARC). The Superbug Zone highlighted the research being undertaken in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. 

Antimicrobial-resistant microorganisms, commonly known as superbugs, are microbes that have become less susceptible to the drugs we use to block them. Bacteria that resist antibiotics are becoming increasingly common, and threaten to jeopardise our entire health system. Through a range of hands-on interactive activities and games, visitors were able to see different bacteria under the microscope, learn about where they live, which bacteria are good, which are bad and how their molecular machines help them cause and spread disease. 

Visitors could also find out how bacteria fight back when exposed to antibiotics and how we use some viruses that kill bacteria and hence develop new antibiotics. They could even try some of the experiments that the scientists here at Imperial use to find out how bacteria cause disease – including cloning DNA and making bacteria grow green in order to understand how they survive inside the human body. Visitors were also able to enter a mocked up animal facility to see for themselves how animal research is delivering vital findings that will benefit both human and animal health. When guessing which object in the home has the most bacteria on it, one visitor said "I think the computer keyboard must have the most bacteria because we eat food all over them next to our computers, and we don't clean them properly!"

Many visitors said they enjoyed how the researchers were able to communicate what can often be difficult concepts in simple terms for all to understand. Some people also said they liked seeing scientists of different ages and from different backgrounds, providing their children with more ‘identifiable role models’.

A number of the Superbug Zone volunteers were asked if they could present their work in schools and one secondary student said ‘if science was explained like this, I think I would do better … this was a much more fun way to learn’.

The event was so popular this year that we had long queues waiting outside the Flowers Building on both days, wanting to visit the SuperBugZone!

For more news on the Festival and Centre updates follow us on Twitter @cmbi_cpa.  What one of our visitors had to say ...