The shortlisted project, Towards Greener Fragrances, is a collaboration between the Institute for Research in Schools; Queen’s School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering; and Queen’s Ionic Liquids Laboratories (QUILL) research centre.

Participating schools were tasked with using ionic liquids in a greener and more sustainable way for the production of specialist chemicals such as fragrances that have application in personal-care products like perfumes and food flavourings.

More broadly, the project aimed to encourage increased uptake of study in chemical sciences in the post-primary and further-education community in Northern Ireland. Passionate chemistry students from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds got to be a part of a team working with ionic liquids in schools and university laboratories and, ultimately, presenting their findings at a conference.

The practical elements of the project were co-designed between all the project leads to have links to the GCSE and A-Level curriculum so that teachers and students could use their subject knowledge to support the research process and vice-versa.

The project has already achieved a number of distinctions in the past year, including being shortlisted for the Education Awards Ireland 2023 and Highly Commended in the IRIS Awards 2023. Additionally, researchers Dr Shannon McLaughlin and Dr Haris Amir were awarded the inaugural Declan McGeown Outreach Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Northern Ireland section.

Commenting on the upcoming THE awards, Dr Kevin Morgan said the shortlisting was testament to all the hard work that had gone into the project, from university academics, early-career researchers, school teachers and students alike.

He said: “The team aimed for a blended approach whereby new topics and stages of the research always had support from the university end. This allowed the schools to become more confident and work towards autonomy through this scaffolded approach. “Our researchers Haris and Shannon worked so well with the young people on their visits to the schools, explaining how to carry out the initial research and giving guidance for practical activities. This enabled teachers to enhance and contextualise teaching of the Chemistry curriculum, with one school reporting that the project allowed pupils hands-on experience of chemistry they would never otherwise have gained, for example in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.”

The project was made possible via awards from the RSC Outreach Fund in 2021 and 2022. The Times Higher Education Awards ceremony takes place at ACC Liverpool on Thursday 7 December 2023. Go team Queen’s CCE!

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 Inquiries to Una Bradley u.bradley@qub.ac.uk