Pioneer and Ignite! Host the Eighth Annual Ada Lovelace Day Celebration
Pioneer Group opened its UK sites to primary and secondary school children for Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating the achievements of women in STEM and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.
The event was the eighth annual Ada Lovelace Day celebration run by Pioneer in collaboration with educational charity Ignite!. Designed to highlight the critical role of women in science, the events featured engaging, interactive workshops at MediCity Nottingham, BioCity Nottingham, Hexagon Tower, BioCity Glasgow, Edinburgh Technopole, and Colworth Science Park.
School children had the opportunity to meet female company founders, industry leaders, and scientists while taking part in a variety of hands-on STEM activities, including games, live demonstrations, and experiments. Highlights involved making jelly worms from natural polymers to mimic fibre and thread production from recycled clothes; learning the principles of chromatography by separating food colouring mixtures using filter paper; creating parts through hands-on 3D printing using additive manufacturing techniques; and exploring offline coding with Ozobot robots.
Helping to facilitate these sessions were companies from across Pioneer’s sites, including Intertek, Arxada, HGF, Reach Separations, Worn Again, Platelet Services, Almac, Biobest, Roslin CT, Wobble Genomics, Unilever, Symrise, Ordinary Toucan, Pepsi Linton, Magnum Ice Cream Company, Freenome Ltd, 4D Medicine, Locate Bio, Inaphaea BioLabs, and Porterhouse Medical.
The sessions were also supported by the University of Nottingham – Computer Science, Nottingham Trent University – Science and Technology, Stratasys, Trelleborg, and SparkSTEM.
“It was a real pleasure to welcome students from ten local schools to MediCity as part of our Ada Lovelace Day celebrations. This is an event we’ve been proud to host for several years now, and it’s always a highlight on our calendar.
“The students were brilliant; really engaged, full of energy and asked some very clever questions. Our scientists kindly gave up their time to run a variety of hands-on science activities, and the response from the students was incredible. It’s always inspiring to see young people getting excited about science, and we’re proud to play a part in encouraging the next generation of STEM talent.”
Natalie Morris, Head of Events at Pioneer, shared: “One of the most powerful moments of the day is always the ‘draw a scientist’ activity. In the morning, the girls are asked to draw a scientist — and more often than not, they sketch an older man with wild hair and glasses. At the end of the day, we ask them to draw a scientist again. This time, many of their drawings feature women. Whilst it is a simple exercise, it shows we’ve made progress in challenging stereotypes – mission accomplished!”
“One of the most powerful moments of the day is always the ‘draw a scientist’ activity. In the morning, the girls are asked to draw a scientist — and more often than not, they sketch an older man with wild hair and glasses. At the end of the day, we ask them to draw a scientist again. This time, many of their drawings feature women. Whilst it is a simple exercise, it shows we’ve made progress in challenging stereotypes – mission accomplished!”
“Ada Lovelace Day is one of our most important programmes for changing young people’s perceptions about who scientists are, what they do and where science happens. Every year, this event creates powerful experiences for young people to enter into places where innovative science is happening, meet the real people who are working there and ask them lots of questions. This year, we had an incredible array of companies based at Pioneer sites volunteering to share their passion, excitement and dedication for STEM and I know they’ll be fantastic role models for encouraging the young people into STEM careers.”
“We absolutely love taking part in Ada Lovelace Day every year – it’s great to see the next generation of female scientists and engineers get so excited about the work we do here at MediCity! We had a fantastic time building polymer networks out of sweets, 3D printing secret messages using Lego bricks, and answering all the girls’ interesting questions about how 4D Medicine makes bioabsorbable medical devices.”
“Ada Lovelace Day is so important for raising awareness of the huge variety of careers in STEM – as a child, I knew I wanted to be involved in science, but I wasn’t sure what that career would look like, for the type of skills I had. Going to one of these events would have helped me see how many options are out there, and it is really inspiring to see the passion and enthusiasm of both the volunteers and the students!”
Edinburgh Technopole is located in Midlothian Science Zone.
For further information, please contact:
Edinburgh Technopole
Milton Bridge
Penicuik
Midlothian, EH26 0BB
Site Director: Martin Bissell
T: +44 (0)131 445 8600