51³Ô¹ÏÍø

On 9 March 2017 the National Heart and Lung Institute spent an evening looking back over our public engagement success stories from the past year.

Our celebration event was an opportunity to announce the NHLI ENGAGE award and also a chance to hear from some of our academics about their work on projects over the year. 

And the winners are:

Nicola Hellen and Mike Cox

Highly Commended Contribution to Public Engagement 2016

Kylie Belchamber

NHLI Engage Award 2016

We had six presentations from NHLI staff showcasing the public engagement projects they had been involved in during 2016. 

presented his hugely creative and adventurous approach to teaching undergraduates about the physiology of life under pressure which involved riding roller coasters at Thorpe Park. You can read more about the project and watch the film on the 51³Ô¹ÏÍø News pages.

Kylie Belchamber shared her experience of taking part in the X Factor-style online competition ''. She spent around two hours a day for two weeks in June 2016 chatting online to school students and answering their questions which included ‘Are macrophages dangerous?’ and ‘Is animal research ok?’. Kylie highly recommended the experience and would encourage other NHLI scientists to apply to get involved, all details on the . Kylie’s tips for winning were:

1. Wear something cool in your profile picture
2. Write a cool profile
3. Be cool! 

Julia Coffey talked about Navigate the Heart, an engagement project led by five scientists and clinicians from the Royal Brompton that has been to many different events over the past few years including the New Scientist Live event in 2016.

Darius Armstrong-James talked about his contribution to the Superbug Zone at the 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Festival and the Killer Fungus activities at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition that he was involved in. These activities included creating two games about fungal science which are available to download as apps from iTunes;  and .

shared his experience of working with the 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Outreach team to deliver High Altitude Games, a roleplaying activity exploring the science involved in climbing Everest for A level students during a summer school event, read his blog about the project on the . 

Finally Nicola Hellen presented Science in Store, an engagement collaboration between NHLI and the  (BHF). This pilot project tested the concept of using BHF Furniture and Electrical Shops as venues for pop up research engagement events. Three events were held at the Ealing store involving eleven NHLI scientists. The BHF are now developing the idea so it can be rolled out nationally to support other research groups to work with their local furniture shops to deliver events reaching a local community audience. Read all about the project on .