New project launched!

What do 11-14 year olds really think about Materials Science and Engineering – we are going to find out!

Discover Materials have been awarded support by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious awards scheme to fund the Mapping Materials Science and Engineering project.

This project will train up some of our Discover Materials Ambassadors  (who will be the ‘Engineers’ in the project) in filmmaking and animation. They will then go into schools to talk to focus groups of 11-14 year olds to find out what the pupils already know about MSE and, once they know about the field, what materials or applications excited them the most.

The Engineers will then collate this information and use it to make videos and demonstrations that will appeal to the pupils. They will also feed this information back to Emma Falconer (the illustrator who designed our ‘Let’s Move to the Moon’ booklets) which will illustrate a graphic that brings in the areas of MSE that appeal to the focus groups.

The Engineers will then refine the videos, demonstrations and graphic by running two further focus group sessions resulting in a package of co-created outreach activities to appeal to 11-14 year olds which will be disseminates at STEM events during the Summer of 2026 and freely available on our website.

Find out more about this, and other projects funded by the Ingenious Awards scheme in 2025, here: https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/programmes/uk-grants-and-prizes/ingenious-public-engagement-grants-scheme/awardees/awardees-2025