Our first public engagement events for 2025 took place at the start of March, with teams of researchers from Cork, Sligo and Dublin all chipping in. The Cork based CCI team from UCC Chemistry and Tyndall demonstrated how to make a battery for the Lifetime Lab Engineers Open day on Sunday the 2nd of March. The very next day, the Dublin based team kickstarted the CCI stand for the annual ESB Science Blast which is run over 4 days in the RDS Simmonscourt in Dublin.
As always for our Public Engagement activities, these events provide a unique opportunity for our researchers to meet in a non-formal environment to network, share experiences and work together as a team. This is especially true for the ESB Science Blast where the researchers from Trinity setup and ran the first two days, followed by the UCC and Sligo researchers who shared the responsibilities for Day 3 and 4. They also get to develop leadership skills, communication skills and teaching skills. Thank you to Bláithín and Niamh from Trinity for leading the stand, as well as Irthasa and Nishanth for leading the Sligo team and helping Niamh on Day 4. Thank you also to Niamh, Rebecca and Forest for communicating with students through the medium of the Irish language.
This year we also tested our newly developed Trinity Feedback survey tool, which worked perfectly over the 4 days. The overall Customer Satisfaction Score (CAST) for the CCI stand at the ESB Science Blast 2025 is 89%, same as last year i.e. most companies are happy with over 75%, anything over 85% is considered “exceptional”. However, we recieved feedback from 1293 students this year (2025), compared to 931 last year (2024) and 672 in 2023. So the CCI stand was a lot busier this year, almost twice as busy as 2023. Well done to all of our postgrad ambassadors who gave up their time and pulled themselves away from their research to engage with so many aspiring young scientists.
Photo credit (Lifetime Lab Open Day) – Keerthi Nair (Tyndall National Institute)
Current Chemistry Investigators (CCI) 