Engagement
Public and patient engagement
Our research makes an important contribution to the health of the nation, and we believe it is important for us to communicate our research to patients and the general public. We hope to inspire future generations of engineers, scientists and researchers as well as encouraging people to help shape our future research plans.
School workshops
iMBE has developed a school workshop called ‘Great Bones’, where students have the opportunity to ‘be a medical engineer’. We can adapt it to students between the ages of 10-18, and can run it as a short workshop (50 minutes) or a full afternoon activity – either at a school or on-site at Leeds University, for up to 60 students.
Patient engagement
Although sometimes our research is laboratory based or computational, our long-term goal is that everything we do will have patient benefit. We work closely with the Patient and Public Involvement team at the Leeds Biomedical Research Centre (http://leedsbrc.nihr.ac.uk/patient-and-public-involvement/) to contribute to their ‘Ask the Researcher’ events. Some patients get involved with our research – whether that’s to allow us to develop a ‘subject specific’ computational model from an MRI scan, or to understand why a joint replacement may have failed by looking at the retrieved device.
Science fair exhibits
Over the last few years iMBE has demonstrated it’s research through a number of science fairs. We’ve exhibited at Cheltenham Science Festival, The Big Bang Fair, and have 
supported the local Otley Science Fair since it started 10 year ago. Frank, our cycling skeleton, is usually our most popular exhibit, but we’ve lots of other hands-on activities and demonstrations that people can get involved with. For the last few years we’ve also enjoyed exhibiting at the Great Yorkshire Show.
Look out for updates on our newsfeed.
Talks
Our researchers have also given public science and careers talks – ranging from an entertaining overview at Otley Science Café, or Café Scientifique, to careers days across Yorkshire. Researchers in our Centre for Doctoral Training have been founding members of the Leeds PubhD series. We’ve also been invited to talk to a number of interest groups about our research. Audiences have included members of the IMechE, The University of the Third Age, The WI and the Calverley Over-50s group. We are always keen to get involved, so if you think a talk about our research would be of interest, do get in touch!