Outreach Award

Lizzie Driscoll

AW-Outreach

Lizzie is an outreach powerhouse. The final year School of Chemistry PhD student has been incredibly proactive in delivering battery education to a range of audiences, from school students to the wider non-scientific group. She designed an effective education model, based on Jenga, to explain the operation of Li-ion batteries which has been favourably received to say the least; the model was featured by the RSC, ACerS and Discover Magazine. Lizzie has pushed for inclusivity in her work by making the resource accessible for students with visual impairment with tailored events at Birmingham’s ThinkTank Museum and Touchbase Pears. Throughout her PhD, Lizzie has remained committed to engaging with the local area and enhancing Chemistry outreach activities.

In the last two years alone, Lizzie has conducted demonstration lectures including the RSC Top of the Bench competition, CPD and other online outreach sessions on electrochemistry and batteries to support teachers and students. She has helped to devise and deliver 200 chemistry experiment kits as part of the virtual CoCoMAD20 festival so that disadvantaged students local to Cotteridge could still take part in the event which normally takes place annually in the community park. Eager to pass the torch, Elizabeth also developed and led a remote lab during the COVID-19 lockdowns to inspire third year Chemistry students to develop their own outreach activities. It is therefore without doubt that Lizzie has been a frontrunner in outreach within the EPS Community.