Lunch Hour Lecture | Orbyts: Research-with-Schools Projects that Transform Inclusivity in Science
12 January 2023, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm
Dr William Dunn will showcase a whistle-stop tour through Orbyts , which is a multi-award-winning movement founded at UCL, and now running across the UK, that creates partnerships between scientists and schools.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
UCL Events
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About the Lecture:
UK science has chronic diversity issues and shortages of specialist teachers in schools. Orbyts is a multi-award-winning movement founded at UCL, and now running across the UK, that creates partnerships between scientists and schools that are proven to address these issues. The programme provides school students with relatable science role models while empowering them to conduct original research projects. This structure of regular interventions, inspirational role models and active ownership of research is proving to be transformative; dispelling harmful stereotypes and profoundly shifting perceptions of science and scientists. It is particularly impactful for groups historically excluded from science. For example, our partner schools report 100% increases in girls uptake of A-level physics, following participation in an Orbyts project at GCSE. The programme has enabled more than 220 school students to become authors of scientific papers in the last 5 years.
This year, Orbyts researchers will partner with schools to support research projects on: medical physics, exoplanets, aurorae, AI and machine learning, plasma, space weather and quantum physics. Dr William Dunn will showcase a whistle-stop tour through some of last year's Orbyts projects, where possible letting recorded presentations by the schools do the talking.
About the Speaker
Dr. William Dunn
Ernest Rutherford Fellowship at UCL Astrophysics group
Dr. William Dunn has run Orbyts since 2017. He currently holds an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship in the UCL Astrophysics group, through which he X-rays planets with NASA and ESA spacecraft. Before his ERF, he held fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, a European Space Agency NPI fellowship at ESAC (Spain) and at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UK), where he undertook his PhD and held a PDRA role. Prior to his PhD, he launched programmes for Amazon and spent 6 years working on shop floors for Arcadia Group, All Saints and Megacity, while doing his MSci at UCL. At various points in life, he's been a semi-professional dancer, a semi-professional MtG player, a school governor and has tried to see as much of the world as life would let him.