Trio Sci Cymru

A new initiative by the Welsh Government to boost take-up of STEM subjects in Wales.

We will work with school pupils across the South Wales Valleys to deliver innovative STEM outreach programmes.

Trio Sci Cymru is led by the Welsh Government’s National Science Academy, in collaboration with Cardiff, Swansea, Aberystwyth and Bangor universities. It is backed by the European Social Fund and the Welsh Government’s National Science Academy.

Over a three-year period, we will engage 3,172 key stage 3 pupils, offering a unique opportunity to participate in three different innovative STEM enrichment programmes.

Trio Sci Cymru video

Projects

Apothecary bees

Led by Professor Les Baillie of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, this project will introduce pupils to the award-winning Pharmabees project, where they will learn about the importance of bees and other pollinators, the medicinal properties of honey and its potential to treat antibiotic-resistant hospital superbugs.

Pupils in Year 8 will become ‘honey detectives’, helping pharmacists identify the plants responsible for the antibacterial activity of University honey. In Year 9, they will isolate antibacterial compounds from the plants. Through these activities, the students will develop an appreciation of the drug-discovery process and the science which underpins medicine.

Chemistry in the third dimension

Led by Dr David Willock of the School of Chemistry, this project will use a portable 3D cinema to give pupils a chance to step inside a variety of chemical systems. The workshops will combine computational chemistry with 3D projection to bring chemistry to life at the atomic level.

Students will learn how properties of everyday materials are linked to atomic structure. Workshops will be themed on the environment, plastics and drug discovery. They will also feature career profiles of people who have studied the subject.

The programme concludes with students designing their own computational chemistry experiments and analysing data obtained from a supercomputer simulation.

UniverseLab

This project is overseen by Dr Paul Roche of the School of Physics and Astronomy. It uses space to engage students with science through a combination of 3D shows, virtual and augmented reality, robotic telescopes and hands-on workshops.

Exploring the universe from their classrooms, pupils will experience how astronauts live and work on the International Space Station, and plan the future exploration of Mars. The remotely controlled Faulkes Telescopes will capture images of planets, stars and galaxies, which the pupils will monitor over the next three years.

In the workshops, the pupils will study craters, meteorites and fossils, and learn about the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, while they also scan the skies searching for new asteroids, comets and supernovae.