International Women's Day 2019

For International Women's Day 2019, we introduced Dalia and Dayana, two of the girls from our ChemSparks programme, to Dr Suze Kundu, nanochemist, Digital Science's head of public engagement and science communicator extraordinaire!

Suze was in Nottingham for the University of Nottingham's Women in Chemistry Conference, so we brought the girls along in the evening to meet her. Before we met up with Suze, the girls got to see what academic conferences are like, and in particular what academic posters are like. We had an interesting conversation with a researcher from the University of Bradford about her work as part of a research group looking at gels that absorb carbon monoxide and can be used as a safety feature in industrial settings. We also spoke to a patent attorney, and learnt about how intellectual property works within academic research - one researcher had sold hers to a university for a pound!

The girls had done lots of research on Suze and asked her some brilliant questions about her research and career. We had some really interesting conversations about materials science, nanotechnology and science competitions, and Suze also heard the girls talk about the areas of science they're interested in pursuing, giving them great advice about keeping their horizons open.