On Thursday, 22 June, fifteen students from Years 10 and 12 had the opportunity to visit a world class research institute for an open day with the theme, “Lessons about the Immune System, COVID and Health”.

The programmes of talks included three given by UCL Professors, as well two post-doctoral scientists undertaking cutting edge research at the institute.

Programme:

• 13:25 – T-cell tolerance & autoimmunity by Dr Natalie Edner
• 13:40 – Antibodies against viruses by Dr Emma Touzier
• 13:55 – Infection and Immunity research and study at UCL By Prof Richard Milne

Students were able to see many links between the talks and their learning of GCSE Topic 5 ‘Health & Disease’, as well as learn about highly innovative new approaches in the field of immunology, such as localised immune suppression. It was great to see Wilson’s students engaging in discussion and making the most of the opportunity to pose their own questions to researchers.

Students also had the opportunity to engage in interactive activities that included a pipetting competition, herd immunity lucky dip and Jenga, and viewing live cells under a phase contrast microscope. It was a successful day for Wilson’s students, winning four of the competitions on offer!

Here are some of their accounts of the day:

“I enjoyed the trip because I thought it was very insightful; I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to see the university and its facilities in person, and I found the topics of the talks very interesting and informative. The most striking lecture, in my opinion, was about primary immunodeficiency. I was particularly intrigued by it because I didn't really know much about primary immunodeficiency before and it's a topic that we haven't covered extensively in school.

“It was fascinating to learn about both the developments made in treatments like locally supressing immunity after an organ transplant and also the wide potential future research in this field. I've been inspired to starting learning to code in R to hopefully make use of the fast-paced emergence of bioinformatics with the help of rapidly developing AI techniques. Seeing the very modern Pears Building has also piqued my interest in studying at UCL and will certainly help in choosing where I want to study at university. Thank you for arranging a very informative trip.”

Liam (Year 12)

“This trip was a fantastic opportunity to learn about immunology and gain an insight into life as an undergraduate studying medicine. My favourite lecture was 'Primary Immunodeficiency' by Professor Siobhan Burns, and I especially enjoyed learning about advances in the field such as whole-genome screening.”

Ameer (Year 12)