International collaboration at heart of science competition

The Concord College sixth formers brought much of the project together online when they had all returned home at the end of the last term.

The national Science at Heart competition was launched by the BHF Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial College London earlier this year to engage sixth form students with cardiovascular research.

The competition required teams of up to six students to design an ePoster with the aim of illustrating a strategy for bringing hard sciences and biomedicine together to reduce the number of deaths and disabilities caused by heart and circulatory disease.

The students involved were selected after Concord’s 6.1 year group were invited to send applications to the science department to consider their involvement.

Concord’s head of science Barry Brown announced that students Anna Akwukwuma, 17, Nigerian, Wiktoria Brdej, 17, Polish, Brandon Low, 17, Malaysian, Shaz Raja, 17, Irish, Jolynne Tan, 17, Malaysian, and Sophia Wan, 18, Chinese – who will enter the Acton Burnell-based college’s 6.2 this month – have been selected among the top 10 entries across the country after ‘impressing’ seven judges.

Their entry ‘SOS: Save our Soles’ introduces a SMART-Sock which is a new solution to aid the diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease characterised by an increased change in heart rate with the future hope of paving further preventative medicine.

As a result, in the finals at the end of the month, the Concord students will be required to create a short presentation explaining the poster to a panel of expert judges – to be delivered virtually on Microsoft Teams – as well as answering follow-up questions to support their work.

First, second and third prizes of £3,000, £2,000 and £1,000 will be awarded to schools to support science-related activities.

Mr Brown said: “I’m so proud of the team for reaching the final of this prestigious competition.

"After a tough year of disruption with so much online learning and immediately after sitting lots of TAG assessments they enthusiastically threw themselves into this new challenge.

“They worked hard to pull this together in a very short time frame and I was bowled over when I saw their finished entry which was so professional and highly innovative.

“I think those with experience of researching and creating scientific posters for EPQ utilised these skills very effectively. But there was also a high level of creativity and innovative thinking.

"As has been typical of this year, much of the project came together online and this was after the end of term they had all returned home – a truly international collaboration.”

Speaking of the experience so far, Anna said: “The hardest part of creating the ePoster was coming up with an idea. We brainstormed for days on end, seemingly to no avail.

“Then, just before the due date, Shaz came up with the idea of a sock that could be used for the diagnoses of peripheral arterial disease.

“We researched the feasibility of this idea and proceeded to develop the poster. Working with such brilliant-minded people was fun and actually inspiring.”

She added: “Naturally I hope we win, but getting to the finals is already an achievement in itself.”