CIR at the Edinburgh Science Festival 2014

The University of Edinburgh / MRC Centre for Inflammation Research made its debut appearance at the Edinburgh International Science Festival this year, as part of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine’s “Meet the Medical Scientists” drop-in event. Using development funding from the British Society for Immunology, Donald Davidson led a team of 20 CIR staff and students to design, make and run a series of new public engagement activities with an allergies theme. With over 2000 visitors to this drop-in event at the National Museum of Scotland from 15th – 19th April, our team was kept busy! However, the effort and enthusiasm of all our volunteers was clearly appreciated by those playing and learning with our various activities; including testing their speed at Mel Leech and John Marwick’s “Rash Decisions” ball pool challenge, getting creative with Iris Mair and Joanne Hay’s “Immunological stickers” activity, and watching our “Denny and the T-Team” dendritic cell-based puppet demonstration before trying to find the matching antigen-receptor pairs hidden around the room. The CIR would like to thank all those involved in this outreach activity.