Perhaps unsurprisingly, not much happened in terms of outreach during the (worst of the) COVID-19 pandemic. However, early this year, “an interesting opportunity presented itself” 😉 in that I let go of my admin role as Coordinator of International Placements and stepped forward as Coordinator of Outreach, Public Engagement and Widening Participation for the Department.
 
In all honesty, I welcomed the change – after all, Outreach is something I have done since high school, and this new role gave me the chance to leverage some excellent “resources” (i.e. fantastic people within the Department) to deliver all sort of cool activities. The list is way too long to be reported here, and with some luck we shall have a proper website for all that.
 
With this post I wanted to highlight something “different” with respect to the usual school visit and such. Meet Jack, an incredibly talented child, 6 years of age only and yet very knowledgable (and I really mean it!) about Chemistry, Physics, and more. Jack wanted to visit the Department to have a look at some actual equipment, so we went to “see” some lasers under the prime supervision of Prof. Stavros himself. After that, it was time to build some molecular models… yep – we built some ice (of course!), and some other crazy stuff as well.
 
 
It has been incredible to witness such talent in such a young child – with some luck we’ll be seeing Jack in a few years as an UG!