Imperial Festival takes over campus

Campus was swarmed by 15,000 visitors last weekend as the fourth annual Imperial Festival took place. Hosted by Imperial College London, the festival is a celebration of all things science, technology and arts, featuring interactive exhibits, workshops, talks, tours and performances.

The goal of Imperial Festival is to showcase the work of Imperial College scientists, enabling visitors to engage with them directly to learn about their research. This year’s Festival ran over the whole weekend for the first time on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th May.

Over the weekend a number of scientists gave talks presenting their work, including Dr Robin Carhart-Harris from the Department of Medicine who spoke about his unconventional research which involves studying the effects of psychedelic drugs on the brain in order to develop new treatments for conditions like depression.

Dr Rebecca Bell gave an engaging talk about earthquake science, explaining how modern technology like GPS is being used to investigate new types of earthquakes which release energy over a long period, potentially triggering larger traditional quakes like the one which devastated parts of Japan in 2011.

Work from the Robot Vision Research Group and the Dyson Robotics Laboratory was presented by Professor Andrew Davison, who showed the audience the latest developments in Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping which could someday be part of domestic humanoid robots.

There were also talks on genetics, government science funding, performance anxiety treatments, pandemics, economics and frogs. On Sunday the Business School presented a series of short talks featuring “snippets of contemporary business insight”.

Tours of the Civil Engineering Structures Laboratory, the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, the in-house recycling plant CompPod and the industrial Carbon Capture Pilot Plant were available. Visitors were also able to have a go at flying on Imperial’s full motion flight simulator, which is used to study aircraft performance.

Almost 1,000 Imperial alumni and their guests took part in the annual Alumni Weekend, which ran alongside the festival providing opportunities for alumni to reconnect with classmates and explore what Imperial has to offer today.

The Festival relies on a large number of student volunteers, who help run interactive exhibits, greet and direct visitors, guide tour groups, hand out leaflets and get things ready behind the scenes. “I looked after the Band of Household Cavalry on Saturday and it was amazing to have such prestigious guests to open the festival!” says volunteer Michael Yat Kit Chung.

“It’s great to see so many children around as well – hopefully we have inspired them to be future scientists and engineers!”. The Band of Household Cavalry were one of several musical acts to perform at the festival, alongside Geekpop songster Johnny Berliner and two of Imperial’s student a cappella groups, The Imperielles and The Techtonics.

Splitting events up into multiple themed zones, the campus was filled with interactive exhibits for young and old visitors to enjoy. In the marquee on Queen’s Lawn there was the Research Zone, where many of Imperial’s departmental research groups set up stalls with games and opportunities to see new technologies in action.

There was the Brain Zone in Sherfield Building, the Robot Zone in Sir Alexander Fleming Building, the Light Zone in the Great Hall and the popular Superbug Zone in the Flowers Building, where visitors could learn about everything “from ancient bacteria to toxic fungi”.

The College invited a team of ‘Science Buskers’ led by Dr Simon Foster to entertain crowds with on-the-spot demonstrations alongside balloon performers, bubbleologists and a cast of famous historical figures from science who roamed the festival campus.

Imperial’s fleet of antique car mascots were out on show near the Festival entrance, with volunteers from the Motor Clubs explaining their history; George the Mechanical Dragon was also parading around campus, amusing visitors.

The Food Zone featured stalls from the London Farmer’s Market and a College-run barbeque, and drinks were available at Imperial’s “pop-up pub”, the Haemo Globe Inn. The College also sold merchandise including limited edition Imperial Festival T-shirts and bags.