With sponsorship from Salmon Scotland, Institute of Aquaculture PhD students recently invited high school students to visit the University of Stirling campus and interact with them about their research. It was a fun day which hopefully broadened their ideas about what Universities do, and how research contributes to real societal issues.

The visiting students came from Dunblane High School, Queen Victoria School (Dunblane), McLaren High School (Callendar) and Dollar Academy.

Prof Simon MacKenzie opened the event, followed by a talk from event sponsor, Hamish Macdonell of Salmon Scotland, who spoke to students about his career journey, highlighting that everyone takes a different path.

The first of a series of presentations by PhD researchers was given by Stephanie Horn, who spoke about her work in Bangladesh and the impact the development of tilapia farming has had on people’s nutrition and resilience to climate change (See Hotfish Podcast 3).

Alexander Kaminski also presented, discussing some of his work work with smallholder farmers in Africa and the role aquaculture plays in livelihoods, diets and food security (See Hotfish Podcast 2)

Also presenting were Karla Fernández Quiroz exploring challenges in utilising vegetable-based feed for Atlantic salmon, Tim Wiese on Atlantic salmon welfare and Jibril Jibril on managing fish disease problems in Nigeria. General themes of all the talks from the PhD students were how they got to where they are, what it's like being a student in the Institute of Aquaculture and the importance of research in Aquaculture.

After the presentations, pizzas and drinks for all the students were served, followed by a scavenger hunt. Everyone was asked to download the app "Goosechase" and they were given "missions" to complete. Students were separated into groups (mixing the schools together to get them interacting with other students), and they had to work together to find answers to their missions.

Some of the missions required them to find answers within student posters, and some were fun and silly (as a group, to imitate catching a fish etc). Some of the missions required photos and some were looking for keywords. The group with the most points won a £20 amazon voucher each, with the runners up all getting salmon Scotland t-shirts.

Feedback from the event was very positive and will hopefully help inspire the next generation of researchers.

Photo credits: Emma McDonald and Amalia Krupandan