International Day of Women and Girls in Science 🧬

How are University of Oxford scientists inspiring the next generation of women and girls in science? From badger behaviour to aerospace experts, Oxford Sparks have explored how our female researchers are leaving no science stone unturned…

Tanesha Allen

Badger Behaviour Researcher

“My ancestors were slaves, my grandparents attended segregated schools during the Jim Crow era in the American South, and my parents worked as a janitor and a receptionist.”

Obviously, my working-class background doesn’t match the stereotypical privileged background associated with Oxford students. Nevertheless, the privilege of being raised an hour south of Seattle, Washington — a place with beautiful evergreen trees, mountains, and bodies of water — allowed me to explore nature up close. I played with insects, watched deer roaming around my backyard, and raised a variety of pets. Animals always fascinated me. However, the only animal-related careers that were presented to me, were being zookeeper or veterinarian.

Elementary, middle, and high school (the American equivalent of primary and secondary school) gave me plenty of hands-on experience with animals. Releasing hatched salmon into the wild, dissecting frogs and owl pellets, and volunteering at the Humane Society fuelled my love for animals to the point where I attended the Washington State University Honors College to study Animal Sciences, intending to become a veterinarian. Yet, as I progressed through my studies, animal behaviour and how it’s affected by their environment captivated me since it revealed the full complexity behind animals.

Nearly a year after graduating with my Bachelor’s degree in 2012, I travelled to the UK where I studied how ‘burying beetles’ choose between potential mates and relatives for my Master’s degree at the University of Cambridge. Analysing how relatively simple animals like ‘burying beetles’ made complex choices regarding the health of their offspring increased my interest in reproductive behaviour. Because mammals deal with the extra costs of pregnancy and producing milk for their young, I find these decision-making processes particularly fascinating.

Currently, I’m a PhD student in the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) where I study how European badgers use scent to communicate with each other. When I’m not in Wytham Woods conducting fieldwork, or in the office analysing my data, I participate in various outreach activities as a Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Ambassador for the university, a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Ambassador, and as a STEM partner to engage primary and secondary school students with wildlife monitoring and badger research in Oxfordshire.

What can you tell from someone’s scent? Quite a lot, actually! Sex, age, reproductive status, illness, diet, social group, and various other factors affect the bacterial activity and chemical composition underlying an individual’s odour. Conveying messages through scent — otherwise known as olfactory communication — allows individuals to leave long-lasting cues and signals that can be detected even in the absence of the message sender. This proves particularly useful during night-time when visual and vocal cues/signals are harder to detect.

Like other nocturnal mammals, European badgers mostly use olfactory communication. Badgers encode individual- and group-specific information through numerous odour sources (faeces, urine, and gland secretions) as they roam and forage. By depositing excretions and secretions in latrines (small pits where badgers leave faeces and urine), the general environment or even on each other, they can convey messages about territorial boundaries, resources, and themselves. My research focuses on how badgers advertise themselves, particularly for mate selection. Four topics form the basis of my research: how badgers use scent to advertise themselves, what costs are incurred by this advertisement, how accurately these costs reflect an individual’s condition, and how other badgers react to these scents.

I work with the rest of WildCRU’s Badger Team in Wytham Woods during our two-week fieldwork sessions which happen during spring, summer, and autumn. In the afternoon, we set up traps along entrances and paths near each badger den (also known as a ‘sett’) and bait them with peanuts. Around 7–7:30 a.m., we check the traps and use a quad bike to transport the badgers to the Chalet where we sedate them, take measurements (body length, toothwear, fleas, etc.), and collect samples (blood, fur, urine, gland secretions). These measurements are recorded onto a form, labelled with the badger’s tattoo number (a unique ID that each badger receives on its left inner thigh), and later uploaded into a database containing information dated back to 1987. Once the badgers recover three hours later, we return each one of them to the sett where it was caught before resetting the traps. No badgers are harmed during this process.

The samples we gather during fieldwork are used in my experiments. Three camera traps are set up at different setts where badgers are likely to roam. Depending on the experiment, each sett will receive a small tube of either urine or gland secretion along with a tube of water as a control. The tubes are pushed into the soil so that the scent lingers throughout the night, and I record myself using American Sign Language to point out the location of each sample, making the sign for water or urine. The camera traps record any movement throughout the night, and the resulting footage is collected in the morning together with the samples. These experiments last for about two weeks each time — depending on the cooperation of the badgers — so that I can get enough footage to analyse how sex, age, and familiarity affect how individual badgers respond to different scents.

My research involves a lot of data analysis. This can require quite a bit of creativity as certain statistical tests may not work for certain types of data, and getting big sample sizes to prove relatively small effects can be tricky. It all proves worthwhile, however, when I get to engage a wide variety of audiences — from fellow researchers at conferences to young students in schools — with the work that I do. I love inspiring others to see animals as the amazing creatures that they are.

Shazeaa Ishmael

Quantum Computer Researcher

Shazeaa working on building the microscope

“I was born in South London, both of my parents are first generation immigrants from Guyana and myself and my two sisters where raised in a traditional Muslim family. I have always had a keen interest in science and often wondered how things worked and why they were a certain way. No doubt inspired our frequent trips to the London Science Museum, my intrigue was always encouraged and supported by my family.”

At secondary school I was incredibly lucky to have some amazing science teachers who tried to make lessons interactive and interesting, even with classroom restrictions. Many of them were very encouraging of my passion for science and my decision to pursue it in higher education. I was also awarded the Nuffield scholarship, which gave me the opportunity to work in the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory in London for a summer, synthesising magnetic nanoparticles. This was my first experience working in a lab, and I loved it!

After completing my A-Levels I started an undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Warwick in 2011. That’s where I developed my passion of experimental physics and learnt to love the frustrations and triumphs that occur in a laboratory. During the final year of my degree I decided that I wanted to do a PhD; I applied and eventually won a place on the Diamond Science and Technology Centre for Doctoral Training. This meant completing a one year Master’s degree focusing solely on diamond as a material with a vast variety of unique properties and as many applications. This was followed by completing a PhD at Oxford University in the Materials Department with the Photonic Nanomaterials Group. I am currently a third year PhD student, focusing on using synthetic diamond with specifically fabricated defects to be used for quantum computing.

While at Oxford, I have taken on a number of roles in college and in the department which address issues of diversity and equality. Most significantly, I started the Women in Material Science group to help support other people working and studying in the department who identify as women, and non-binary people, and to celebrate their work. We also host careers events for undergraduates and postgraduates who are looking to network with women working in STEM. I also take part in a lot of public engagement and outreach events to make science more accessible to everyone, particularly for people from similar backgrounds to my own.

Women in Material Science group taken from the Oxford Materials homepage.

My research project is part of Networked Quantum Information Technologies(NQIT), a research hub that brings together research groups across the country to try and build the first quantum computer in the UK.

A quantum computer is promised as the next great step in computing power for human kind. It uses the “weirdness” of quantum theory to store data and perform algorithms in a manner which is very different than conventional computers, such as the ones we use at home. Traditionally, everything your computer sees is written in a specific series of 1s and 0s. In a quantum computer the rules are a different — these differences mean your computer can solve problems much faster, more accurately and can store more data. Imagine you want to find a particular phrase in a vast library of books. A traditional computer would have to read each book, one at a time, until it found the phrase, whilst a quantum computer could look at all the pages in all the books, all at the same time! Although no one has managed to build a quantum computer yet, there are many predictions for what they could be used for, including the development of medicines and other treatments, simulating complex biological systems and safer encryption of our private data.

My research project involves building a microscope that can image these defects, as they are only a few atoms big and invisible to the naked eye. By being able to look at these defects, we can select the best ones and control them and eventually we will be able to combine lots of defects to build a computer.

Gladys C Ngetich

Jet Engine Cooling Researcher

“I was born and raised in a family of nine in a tiny village of Amalo in Rift Valley Kenya. I studied in a local primary school called Lelaibei Primary, which had very limited resources. As a result, I graduated with paltry marks, which made getting admitted to a good secondary school almost impossible. With my mother as my strongest advocate, Mercy Girls Secondary School saw great potential in me and offered me a chance.”

With the help of the exceptional teachers in the school, I went from not being able to construct a grammatically correct English sentence to graduating at the top of my class, emerging as the best student in the Kipkelion district. I was awarded a scholarship to pursue undergraduate studies in Kenya. The influence from two of my brothers who are engineers, combined with the passion I had developed for maths and physics in school, influenced my decision to delve into engineering.

I attended Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) to study Mechanical Engineering, and was one of the only nine girls in a class of about 80 students. I kept a resilient spirit and aimed to maximize the myriad of opportunities that laid before me — consciously getting involved in sports and leadership roles in school. In my fourth year of undergraduate studies, I majored in Thermofluids. It was during this time that I realised I had a strong passion for thermofluids. In my five years studying engineering, I earned top awards in sports and academics, and ultimately received a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue a PhD in Engineering Science (Aerospace) at the University of Oxford.

I joined Oxford Thermofluids Intitute as a PhD student in October 2015. My research aims to develop advanced cooling schemes for jet engines and I work in a close collaboration with the Rolls Royce Plc — I’ve received a patent for my work! Alongside my research, I tutor engineering undergraduate students at Oriel College.

I am still passionate about sports. I play football for my college team and I am also an Oxford Blue Athlete for 400 m hurdles and 100 m hurdles.

Having beat the odds and continued climbing the academic ladder from a local primary school in a remote village in Rift Valley Kenya to the world’s best university, I am deeply committed to helping empower girls and women. My mother has remained an icon in my life — challenging me to always go higher and holding my hand when I failed; and therefore I understand how important mentorship is to achieving success. I co-founded an organisation called ILUU, headquartered in Nairobi which mentors, inspires and empowers girls from the rural parts of Kenya. In July 2018, I was named one of the UK’s Top 10 Rare Rising Stars.

Aprajita Verma

Galaxy Explorer

This artist’s rendering shows the Extremely Large Telescope in operation on Cerro Armazones in northern Chile

“One of my earliest memories is being totally awestruck and overwhelmed looking at the star filled sky when visiting my grandfather’s house in rural India when I was 5 years old. Since then, I always held studies of the Universe at the back of my mind as something I was very interested in. At school I enjoyed most subjects including art, history, maths and science, which made it difficult to choose what to do for GCSE and beyond.”

I always had an inclination towards more quantitative subjects such as science and maths, and I knew I wanted to study the three sciences separately. I also took GCSE Economics, which I really enjoyed. I considered Economics, Medicine and Physics as potential degree subjects and found it challenging to decide between them. While I could have made the decision based on career and wealth prospects, I decided to follow my instincts and the subject that my thoughts kept returning to — my underlying curiosity in understanding how the world around us and the Universe works.

After choosing Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and General Studies A-levels I applied to do a BSc Physics at Imperial College London and then fulfilled my wish to study Astrophysics taking a PhD. I then spent five and a half years at the Max Planck Institute for Extra-terrestrial Physics in Germany returning to the UK in 2006 to join the sub-department of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford where I still work now as a Senior Researcher.

In my spare time, I enjoy sketching and painting, and especially doing crafts with my young daughter. Sometimes arts and crafts crosses into my world of Astrophysics with astronomy related children’s activities at our public open days and helping to organise the first Oxford Artweeks event at Oxford Physics.

My research is focussed on galaxies, trying to understand what processes are going on within them and connecting them to the first galaxies that formed within a billion years of the Big Bang and how galaxies change over the lifetime of the Universe. I also work on some of the largest telescopes that are currently being built, namely the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) that will be the “World’s largest eye on the sky” measuring light from the Universe in wavelengths that our eyes are sensitive to (the visible range) to the infrared (heat); and the Largest Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) that will make a large map of the sky visible to it in a series of short exposures over 10 years creating a “movie” of the Universe.

Both of these telescopes are being built, by different organisations, in the Atacama Desert in Chile. This desert is “high and dry’, and is one of the best sites for astronomical telescopes in the world. In this barren and rocky landscape, a bit like what we would imagine the surface of Mars to be like, the weather and atmosphere are extremely stable (there is very little rain and clouds) allowing astronomers to peer deep into our Universe and study the planets, stars and galaxies.

One of the most exciting prospects of the ELT is that its huge mirror (39m across, just under the width of a football pitch) collects light travelling from the far reaches of the Universe but it also allows us to see the Universe in incredible detail or spatial resolution. The larger the mirror the more detail we can see. This means we get a super-fine view of anything we look at with the ELT. So in my field of galaxy research, such a super-fine view allows us to look at galaxies in great detail at all ages of the Universe to understanding the processes on-going within them.

The Universe also gives us another means to look at galaxies in detail; it’s called gravitational lensing that is sometimes called a ‘natural telescope’ because it can produce zoomed in or magnified images of very distant galaxies. It’s a bit like how a magnifying glass makes small objects or text bigger but in this case the magnifying lens is a massive galaxy that’s focussing the light from a very distant small background galaxy lying behind it. The more massive the galaxy, the more distortion it creates and can produce stretched or elongated images of distant galaxies that we call strong gravitational lensing.

However these objects are extremely rare: out of the trillion galaxies we think are in the Universe, we only know about 1000 gravitational lenses so far as they are very difficult to find. To help us sift out these rare events, we need to look through millions of images of the sky using a combination of computer algorithms and inspection by eye. Human pattern recognition skills outperform computer algorithms, so for many years I have been working with members of the general public or citizen scientists to find these rare gravitationally lensed galaxies in large surveys of the sky.

At spacewaps.org, members of the public have discovered about 100 of new lensed galaxies (visit the website to take part!). I am now figuring out how to find them from the large LSST survey. Because of its large survey area, it is expected to find about a hundred thousand lenses, a huge leap from the small numbers we know today. I am also working on understanding what observing these “natural telescopes” with the ELT will deliver. These will be the most zoomed in views of galaxies than have ever been seen before, revealing clues about how galaxies started their lives and how they have evolved.

Nhu Nguyen

Chemist Who Doesn’t Use Chemicals

“My family relocated to Santa Clara, California, and I had to learn and use English as the main language… learning biology in English was a nightmare for me during the first few months. Through all those years, I sort of knew that chemistry and maths were among my strongest subjects in schools.”

I was born and raised in Vietnam for the first 15 years of my life. When I was about 6, my favourite thing to do with my best friend was to sneak into the kitchen and mix up all the spices and oils that we could find (don’t tell our parents!). Looking back, was this the sign of a chemist in the making…?

When I started at the University of California in Davis, I decided to do Chemistry, though I continued to keep up with maths as well (honestly, I chose chemistry just because I could envision what a chemist would do, and I just wanted to give it a try without fearing failure!). Sometimes I felt I wasn’t doing as well in chemistry as in maths classes; however, after the first year, the study got more intense and focused, and I soon realised that high-level calculus theorems were too complicated for me. At the same time, chemistry started becoming more interesting, especially in the area called organic chemistry. But, there was a major problem… I didn’t really enjoy working in the labs (I’m still scared of breaking glassware or mixing the wrong chemicals).

Fortunately, I met a professor named Dean Tantillo, who was an expert in computational organic chemistry, a.k.a. chemistry WITHOUT lab work. Dean gave me an opportunity to do research in his group and also encouraged me to pursue Ph.D. study. I got my Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and started Ph.D. research with Dean. I’m currently a postdoc in Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

So, what is computational organic chemistry? Well, the common theme is that it involves using computers to study something that happens in the lab, something with molecules so small that the human eyes cannot see. There are many varieties of computational organic chemistry. For instance, in my Ph.D. study, I collaborated with more than 13 experimental chemistry groups in different countries, which meant that I had the chance to work on more than 13 different projects. They did the chemical mixing, and my job was to explain why things happened the way they did. For example, they tried to make something by mixing chemicals together but got an unexpected product (you know, like in cooking, you mix the ingredients together to create the dish you want, but sometime the food doesn’t turn out as expected), so I did some calculations of the reaction on the supercomputer to help understand why they got that product.

Currently, one of the projects I’m working on is computational Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), in which I help confirm the identity of a chemical compound. It’s like calculating finger prints of a person and then comparing them to finger print evidence to confirm if it’s that person (see picture for an example of what I saw on a computer).

Do chemists only do chemistry? Actually no; one major part of research is to write and to publish articles in order to communicate research results. Professor Tantillo loves writing, and working with him really broke my misconception that science writing should sound boring. We tried to put some creativity and humour in the papers whenever possible and appropriate. We tried to make a lot of fun images to explain the chemistry, so another added skill is computer graphic design.

I love contemporary dance and painting, and Dean had really encouraged me to keep a work-life balance, so I often go to dance classes a few times a week. We also loved to do outreach projects to help people learn more about science, and one project I created was “Walking in the Woods with Chemistry.” It was an exhibit of 3D-printed chemical models in the garden to help people learn more about the useful natural compounds produced by plants.

If you enjoy traveling, do consider chemistry! I grew up and went to schools in California, USA — so what brought me here to Oxford? After getting my Ph.D., I was offered a Marie Curie fellowship to do postdoctoral research here in Oxford, so I packed up and moved across the pond. Through all these years, chemistry has given me priceless opportunities to see the world. I went on research trips and meetings in Chile, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, and more.

I hope my chemistry journey can convince you that science isn’t just working in the laboratories. It can include computer modelling, creative writing, graphic design, and traveling! If I may offer some advice, I would say number one is to find a great mentor or boss, and number two is not to be afraid of trials and errors to find what you might enjoy doing.

Roxana Shafiee

Ocean Bug Researcher

“My background is fairly mixed and international. My father is Iranian, my mother is Irish and I was born in Sweden. We moved around a lot when I was younger but we eventually settled in Gloucestershire when I was 7. I went to a big secondary school (with over a thousand students). I really enjoyed science but I also loved creative subjects such as Art and Modern Languages.”

At the end of school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do; I was torn between studying languages or geography at University so I took a gap year to figure it out. I moved to a new city, got a job and spent more time thinking and reading about the subjects I was interested in. The time to think was really helpful and I ended up starting a degree at St Andrews studying Geography a year later. I also took some classes in Earth Sciences — this is when I was first introduced to the wonders of the oceans. I loved the way that studying the Earth allowed me to think creatively about all sciences — chemistry, biology and physics. During my time at St Andrews I got to visit lots of great places including Spain, France and closer to home in Scotland.

I felt that I wanted to continue learning about the oceans, and that I also wanted to contribute to our understanding of the oceans. Therefore, after I graduated in 2016 (with a degree in Environmental Earth Sciences) from St Andrews, I moved to Oxford to start a PhD at the University of Oxford Department of Earth Sciences.

The ocean takes up around 71% of Earth, yet an enormous 95% percent of that ocean is completely unexplored. Microbes (like bacteria) that are invisible to the naked eye are present all throughout the ocean — one millilitre of ocean water can contain over a million microbes! These bugs are very important as they make our planet an environment that humans can live in. Marine microbes produce half of the world’s oxygen and also help reduce the levels of greenhouse gases that are contributing to climate change.

Climate change is causing the oceans to become more acidic and warmer. Will microbes that keep our planet habitable adapt or go extinct in response to climate change? To determine the future of these ocean bugs we need to understand how they live in the current oceans — this is the research I undertake!

I research one of the smallest group of living things on the planet. They are absolutely tiny (1/1000th of a human hair) but they have a huge impact on the oceans — they cycle the element of nitrogen (which is one of the most important elements for biological systems). I’m an ‘ocean gardener’; I grow different microbes from the oceans in our laboratory in the Department of Earth Sciences. I do this by using seawater and then changing the chemistry by adding different ingredients — elements such as copper, iron and cobalt.

This allows us to precisely determine the perfect environment that marine bugs like to live in. From this information we can then make predictions about what might happen to these bugs in the future as the ocean changes. But we can also use this information to understand how these microbes have evolved over billions of years. Unlike large living things, such as dinosaurs, ocean bugs don’t leave fossils so we have to figure out other inventive ways to understand how they may have lived in the ancient ocean. This helps us speculate about what the oceans and Earth looked like billions of years before humans existed! A wise teacher once told me ‘the present is the key to the past’ — it’s very true!

In the future I hope to go out to oceans on a research cruise. My goal is to visit the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica. I want to investigate the marine microbes that I have been growing in the lab in their natural habitat.

Priyanka Dhopade

Aerospace Expert

I was born in India 31 years ago and since then I’ve lived and worked all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia and now the UK.

“I was always interested in and good at Maths and Science, so was inclined towards a scientific discipline from a young age. In primary school, we learned about Roberta Bondar, the first Canadian woman in space and that’s when I became interested in aerospace engineering. Initially, I wanted to be an astronaut, but I thought aerospace engineering was a good backup plan in case the former didn’t work out! The support and encouragement from my parents and teachers was crucial towards making this decision.”

During secondary school, I took all the Maths and Science subjects like physics and chemistry. But I also took Art, French and English literature. I think taking a broad range of subjects was really good for me; it gave me a better perspective. I became slightly unsure of whether engineering was the best choice for me, but when I visited different universities in my final year of secondary school, I got really excited about engineering and all the amazing things that engineers do for society. So, I decided to give it a chance and chose to study aerospace engineering at university.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve learned so much and met so many interesting people. I have a Bachelors degree (4 years of uni), Masters degree (1 year of uni) and PhD degree (4 years of uni) in Aerospace Engineering.

I also love flying on aeroplanes — which can get quite expensive — so instead, I’ve tried skydiving, parasailing, paragliding and bungee jumping. In 2016, I even got the chance to explore my dream of becoming an astronaut when I applied to the Canadian Space Agency’s Astronaut Recruitment Program. I made it to the top 72 candidates from a total of 3,700 — although I didn’t make it to the final round of selections, it taught me a lot about being brave and dealing with disappointment.

I work at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute at Oxford University, where we research aerodynamics and heat transfer, mainly for jet engines. It’s a cool lab with a couple of really big test facilities that are designed to simulate real engine parts.

Jet engines are pretty awesome. They are designed to work at extremely high temperatures, pressures and accelerations.

For example, when an aeroplane is taking off:

• the pressure inside the engine can be as high as 700 psi (the equivalent of a horse standing on an area the size of your thumb)
• the temperatures can be as high as 2,300 degrees Celsius (in comparison, molten lava is actually cooler at around 1,200 degrees Celsius)
• the air flowing past the rotating blades can accelerate as high as 50,000 times faster than the gravitational acceleration on Earth (in comparison, high-performance cars only accelerate at 2 to 5 times the gravitational acceleration on Earth)

At some points in the engine, the temperature of the air can be greater than the melting point of some of the parts inside. So how does the inside of a jet engine not melt?

Using engineering, of course!

The front of the engine sucks in a large amount of cold air from outside. That air is then compressed using complicated sets of rotating and stationary blades before entering the combustor.

But before it does that, some (very little) of the air is directed away through an intricate set of ducts that lead to the hot parts in the turbine section (the red area in the picture above) that need cooling. Individual turbine blades often have a network of cooling holes inside them, to stop them from melting. This is a simplified version of what the inside of a turbine blade looks like, where the dotted line shows the flow of cooler air that’s used to keep the blade from melting:

The more efficient the cooling methods are, the less cold air we need to use. And the less cold air we need to use from the front of the engine, the more of it can be used to generate thrust. That makes an engine more efficient, so that it uses less fuel and emits fewer harmful gases (known as emissions) and is better for the environment!

My typical day consists of making computer models of the hot flows inside a jet engine and analysing the heat transfer to the metal parts.

Since my research is funded by Rolls-Royce who make aircraft engines, they’re pretty interested in what I come up with. So during a typical day, I also talk to engineers from Rolls-Royce who can use my computer models to improve their engine cooling systems (either over the phone or they come visit from Derby).

I usually work on 3 to 4 projects that are related to different parts of the engine, for example, the compressor, the combustor, or the turbine (all of which need different amounts of cooling) so there’s never a dull day! I also get to work with lots of different people who are experts in some very specific things.

I get to travel a lot and present my work at international conferences (where engineers from all over the world come to share their knowledge and research on new, exciting stuff). I’ve been to conferences in New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Canada, Norway and South Korea.

These stories were originally published on the Oxford Sparks Beyond Boundariessite page. The Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the University of Oxford launched a new art competition for Oxfordshire state school students in Years 7, 8, & 9, to create art inspired by research from 12 BAME scientists.

The Beyond Boundaries project, funded by the University of Oxford Diversity Fund, aims to increase the visibility of Oxford’s Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) scientists and mathematicians, bridge the perceived divide between science and art, and further connect schools and local communities with the University.

You can view the submitted artwork here.

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