Meeting creepy crawlies and putting handwashing skills under the microscope

02 Jul 2014

More than 800 children and adults at Community Open Day

The Community Open Day, organised by the Faculty of Life Sciences and Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, was a great success with more than 800 people attending the event.

Staff and students from both schools ran a series of interactive activities and gave short talks to reveal some of the amazing research we do, including the award-winning Worm Wagon painting activity that teaches the public about parasitic worm infections.

Event organizer Natalie Liddle said: “We were thrilled to have had such a great turn out to the event, people from the local community as well as staff and their families.

“Feedback has been tremendous with children really enjoying the opportunity to get hands-on with medical kit. We hope to be able to run similar events in the future and help make more people aware of the fascinating work we do within these buildings”.

Highlights on the day included painting with maggots, building molecules from beach balls and exploring the University’s laboratories – the public also had the chance to get up close and personal with creepy crawlies.

People’s hand-washing skills were also quite literally put under the microscope, with participants invited to see how clean their hands are by using UV lights and fluorescent particles to give a non-harmful illustration of microorganisms and how they can be transiently present on hands and act as a source of contamination/infection.