Cutting-edge research into the use of light and optics, left, in healthcare by the University of St Andrews will be showcased in a new state-of-the-art education programme.
Physicist Kishan Dholakia will head the development of Seeing Life through a New Light, a lecture and interactive demonstration programme accessible to pupils, adults, clubs and charities.
The pound;250,000 project, in conjunction with the award-winning exhibit design company FifeX, will show ways in which light is used in biological and medical research. It is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Some of the presentation will be based on a travelling outreach programme, which included demonstrations of diffraction and light with a collection of hands-on exhibits including working “tweezers” and the bending of light in prisms and water.
Professor Dholakia and his colleagues will add demonstrations of how microscopes work, endoscopes for imaging inside the body and a new method of “seeing the unseeable”, using light to examine biological specimens. The presentation will include an interactive model of a cell and explanations of how light can be used to help detect and treat cancer.
Kishan Dholakia T 01334 463184 E kd1@st-andrews.ac.ukFifeX T 01382 554400 E interactive@fifex.co.uk
