Professor Nguyễn Thị Kim Thanh (centre) and her colleagues organise a science camp in the UK. — Photo vietnamplus.vn

Professor Nguyễn Thị Kim Thanh has always been devoted and concerned with the desire to inspire scientific research in the younger generation, especially disadvantaged children in London, who do not have many opportunities to pursue this passion.

Thanh works at the University College London (UCL), UK, a member of four scientific institutes in the UK with many prestigious international scientific awards. In 2019, Thanh was awarded the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Medal by the Commonwealth Academy of Sciences for her research achievements in the field of nanomaterials for biomedicine.

She used the prize money to organise a science camp in April this year in Wiltshire region of the UK to inspire 8th-10th grade students to perform scientific research. The science camp was held in April 2023 at PGL Liddington adventure entertainment centre under the guidance of Professor  Thanh and colleagues.

A total of 46 high school students in London took part in the Science Camp experience. Most of them are girls from disadvantaged backgrounds or from minority communities from less affluent areas in London who are less likely to pursue a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths).

Students join the science camp. — Photo vietnamplus.vn

“Science Camp is just the beginning of our efforts to advance STEM education and inspire the next generation of scientists. We hope to foster positive changes, especially among girls and minority groups, so that these groups will in the future explore and study STEM subjects at the college level,” Professor Thanh said. 

This camp allows students to have access to many scientific research activities as well as other complementary activities. The students were able to participate in practical scientific experiments in the field of advanced nanotechnology but very interesting and close to daily life, such as synthesising gold nanoparticles with lemon juice and yellow salt, trying experiments discolouring nanoparticles in solution with saline (electrolyte), discovering the stability of nanoparticles when they are protected by a protein layer (egg white) against high concentrations of saline.

Students also describe human civilisation and write a message to aliens, or discuss the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and create a code to transmit messages using coloured blocks and then analyse their code structure (compare students' code with a range of pre-made templates, including hieroglyphs, pixelated Latin, Tetris, Morse code, ASCII, and genetic code).

"I never knew Professor Thanh could make gold nanoparticles with lemon juice. It was amazing to see the solution change color and learn how to use these micro-particles in healthcare, such as testing for infectious diseases like COVID-19," a student said.

The scientist also said that she will expand cooperation with high schools to increase the number of students studying biology, chemistry, and physics subjects with A-level (advanced) by 50 per cent by 2025-2026. — VNS