Onwards and Upwards 🪜
Yay! We have just received the great news that we have been awarded a ‘Communicating Immunology Grant’ from the British Society for Immunology! 💪
These grants are intended to ‘stimulate interest, discussion and understanding of immunology amongst a wide range of audiences; support formal and informal learning about immunology; and promote potential careers options within immunology and inspire future researchers’ — which basically reads like a perfect summary of the Superbugs project and our team’s aspirations!
The new award will help us to extend the duration of our website for at least two years, allow us to develop new content (for instance talk about vaccines), and — together with some new friends that we found along the way — translate the website into Irish so that children in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland who attend Irish-medium primary and secondary schools can fully enjoy the Superbugs website.
The Irish side of things will be co-ordinated by Jenny Mannion who has just completed her PhD studies at Trinity College Dublin, studying the microbes that colonise the respiratory tract and how they interact with the immune system. 🦠🔬
Before her PhD research, Jenny taught science in an Irish-medium secondary school and on Irish summer courses. During that time she designed courses on microbiology and immunology through the medium of Irish. As science teacher she organised school events such as Science Week, Mathletes, ReelLife Science, The Khan Academy Challenge and Scratch Programming. At Trinity, she completed a module on Science Communication and produced a number of videos to communicate her research to a lay audience, and helped to organise “Bugs and Beyond”, a games-centred workshop aimed to educate primary school children on microbes and immune cells.
With such a vast experience in education and engagement we’re excited to have Jenny on board and look forward to working with her and taking Superbugs to the next level!
A tentative launch for the Irish version is St. Patrick’s Day 2022 so watch this space! 🍀
With English, Welsh and Irish covered we are only missing Scottish Gaelic now to be able to provide our Superbugs content for all children educated across the British Isles…
