Outreach

We believe it’s important to give back to the community and we enjoy creating targeted activities to engage children both at our premises and by visiting schools. By working closely with teaching staff, we are able to focus that support specifically where it is needed through our dedicated outreach programmes. We deliver our activities externally in both schools and colleges.

"Lockdown" outreach activity

During the 2020 summer lockdown period we filmed several lessons for upper primary school children which we uploaded on our YouTube channel and promoted them to local schools. This activity was subsequently noted by the Royal Academy of Engineering and shared with over 2000 schools nationally.

Deepika Yadav leading a Schools outreach event — Deepika Yadav delivers STEM activites as part of the School of Engineering’s Milne lectures outreach activity programme.

screenshot of nature publication article "Introducing the nanoworld"

Nature nanotechnology

CEF’s unique outreach activities that introduce the nano-world to primary school students were featured in Nature Nanotechnology volume 12, page 832 (2017).

Read the article

Intergenerational workshops

The APRIL AI Hub team and our Google DeepMind interns delivered interactive sessions for ACE IT, an Edinburgh charity which helps older people to learn digital skills. This unique intergenerational project focused on what AI means for us in today’s world and into the future. We presented innovative applications of AI and the feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive.

APRIL interns delivering ACE IT workshop

APRIL and the Tower of Techport

Another initiative for primary school children that we have very much enjoyed working on is the ‘APRIL and the Tower of Techport’ book, delivered by our APRIL AI Hub team. An exciting, inclusive, and accessible resource for young audiences, over 3000 copies of this book have been distributed to over 400 schools across the UK. This project was funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Milne Lecture Series

Themis Prodromakis delivering his inaugural lecture, and the Milne lecture, as Regius Professor of Engineering atthe University of Edinburgh.

Lindemann Trust outreach event

Caterina Sbandati and Themis Prodromakis deliver a fun interactive activity “transform into neurons”, exploiting in practice how biological signals are communicated and detected. This activity was part of the Lindemann Trust outreach event at the University of Edinburgh.

This article was published on 2025-06-25