skip to content

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

A message from Daan Frenkel

Young chemists learn about the chemistry of light from student volunteers at the Chemistry Open Day

The Chemistry Department opened its doors to over 1500 visitors for the annual Chemistry Open Day, a key attraction of the Cambridge Science Festival because of the wide range of fun and informative hands-on experiments that budding scientists and their families can enjoy, and also because of the acclaimed lectures presented by Dr Pete Wothers to capacity crowds.

It’s impossible to thank everyone in this space who was involved in supporting and organising the Open Day, but I would like to say how grateful I am to everybody in the Department who loaned their time and expertise to make the day a success. This includes the reception staff who dealt with countless queries over the last few months, the postdocs and graduate students who organised the experiments, the undergraduates who helped run the experiments, and the numerous other staff (and their families!) who contributed to the day. My thanks also go to Emma Powney, for her usual excellent direction and organisation of the event.

This year for the first time we also invited alumni to attend a lunch and lecture as part of the events of the day, and we hope to continue to improve our communications with alumni and keep them engaged in chemistry and the Department’s activities, regardless of where their careers have taken them.

The Open Day is one of our principal outreach activities to help young people become excited about chemistry. If this year’s Open Day has sparked the interest of even a few of those in attendance, and opened the minds of others to the world of science, it will have been worthwhile.

Professor Daan Frenkel