Programme by Session

ORBYTS partners PhD students and Post-docs with schools in order to give teenagers (particularly those from under-represented backgrounds) the opportunity to contribute towards active space research. We have grown through word of mouth, from 1 school when we launched in 2015-2016 to 20+ researcher-school partnerships in 2018-2019 (~100s of school students). So far, this has lead school students to produce 4 publications in scientific journals (and we hope to add another 4 publications this year). Every school undertaking the programme in 2017-2018 asked to continue in 2018-2019 and we receive exceptional feedback from teachers and students alike. Logistically, the programme works as follows: after a launch event at a University, science researchers visit their partner schools fortnightly for 2 terms to have school students contribute to active research. At the end of these terms the schools present their work at our ORBYTS conference. Research topics so far have included: exoplanets, molecular spectroscopy, surface features of Mars, stellar formation, planetary aurorae, high redshift galaxies and more (depending on the research interests of the researcher). Our preliminary evaluation is suggesting that ORBYTS is having very positive impacts on student's aspirations, STEM knowledge and perceptions of 'who a scientist is' - addressing some of the chronic diversity challenges that physics faces. Based on this, we are very interested in partnering with more schools and researchers, to scale this impact to more students, and to work with other outreach/engagement groups to continue to develop our best practice and maximise our positive impact on.