Ambassadors’ Conference 2025

This year’s Discover Materials Ambassadors’ (DMA) Conference took place on 10th September, 2025 at the Department for Materials, University of Oxford. It was an opportunity for the ambassadors to interact and share their experience of contributing to public engagement activities for materials science in the year gone by.

The one day conference included a talk by Helena Cotterill which highlighted the need to link the UK’s school curriculum with an awareness for materials science.

Tara Milne, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, found that the session helped to see how the discipline was already included in the school curriculum, albeit under different scientific areas. “It was eye opening to see how many links to materials science exist in school, and how many kids are doing materials without knowing what to call it”, she remarked.

This was followed by a session led by Sethupathi Rangaraj on de-jargonising materials science. It included an interactive game that encouraged science communicators to describe highly technical field-specific terms in ways that are more accessible to a general audience.

During the conference lunch, the delegates engaged with some academics from Oxford that have been involved in science outreach.

The conference closed with the announcement of the DMA Engagement Awards, which recognise significant contributions to the DM outreach endeavour over the previous academic year. Mia Kalogjera, Anna Dickinson-Lomas, and Durga Tilak were the recipients of this prize for 2024/25.

A big thank you to Chris Hamlett, Ilija Rašović, Helena Cotterill, the board of Discover Materials, and all the attendees for making this a memorable conference.