Glasgow Science Festival 2022
In 2022 we were excited to join the Glasgow Science Festival at the Botanic Gardens on the 7th and 8th of June. We were joined by two of our undergraduate interns, Sara Ibgui and Euan Brennan and on the Wednesday by three Anderston Primary school pupils whose activity design we adapted for delivery at the Festival.
This activity, ‘Make your own Vaccine update’, was based on the ‘Predict Infection risk’ activity that we delivered at Anderston Primary school. The pupils had skilfully combined this with the information we covered on the contents of vaccines. The activity involved attendees making their own vaccines by choosing a virus to make their vaccine against and adding the required components – water, that makes up the majority of a vaccine, an adjuvant, a substance that helps the immune system make a big response to the vaccine, and some preservatives that help keep the vaccine stable. You can learn more about the contents of vaccines from the British Society for Immunology website.
We then used a toy white blood cell to explain that we can take a blood sample from an individual before and after vaccination. But as it takes about two weeks for a vaccine to protect someone, we popped the white blood cell into a Time Machine to enable us to take the later sample!
These two samples were tested to see if the toy white blood cell had protective antibodies – a colour change showed that only after vaccination was the toy protected from the virus.
You can find a worksheet on how to perform this activity here - Design a Vaccine
Festivals and Events
In 2020, we took part in Glasgow Science Festival’s: ‘Science on your Sofa’ with a fun video that encourages viewers to make their own snot and trap some bugs! You can watch ‘Snot what is it good for’ below.
In 2021, we were fortunate to be able to attend the Glasgow Science Festival at the Botanic Gardens on Saturday 11th- Sunday 12th of September. We had loads of fun talking with people about respiratory viruses and the immune response. Our fun activity, ‘How do cells send messages’ was a big hit and we were delighted to be joined by teachers and pupils from Anderson Primary school who presented the Co-IMMUNicate App to the children who visited our stand. We gave away over 100 activity sheets for families to take home and complete the activities themselves and have fun making up their own viruses and immune cells. You can download these activity sheets here...How do cells send message activity.
To ensure as wide as possible dissemination of this activity, we also made a video for the 2021 ‘Science on your Sofa’ that you can watch below.
In 2021, we presented to project online at the Scotland-wide ScotPEN Researcher Stories online workshop and via a poster at the British Society for Immunology Congress in Edinburgh showcasing our project.