The IGM Public Engagement Committee, together with the Centre for Life and the NHS Fertility Clinic hosted the free site tours, offering a unique glimpse behind the scenes of the Centre for Life research labs and facilities as part of the British Science Festival 2013. The tours took place on 7th and 8th of September and included a chance to meet some of the people working at Life on the ground-breaking research.

The participants had a chance to see behind the scenes of the famous Centre for Life, admire the view from the bridge link, take a peek inside one of our labs, see short presentations about the research done here at the IGM, visit the Newcastle Fertility Centre, and most importantly, meet the scientists!

Dr Carla Mellough from the stem cell group talked about the exciting developments in heart and eye stem cell therapies, Dr Juliane Mueller explained how zebrafish and mouse models can help in the research of muscular dystrophy, Harsh Sheth talked about the exciting diagnostic technologies being developed by the Quantum Dx, Dr Simon Tual-Chalot and Esha Singh talked about myocardial infarction and the novel therapies that are currently being developed at the IGM, Dr Steven Lisgo displayed images generated by the MRC Wellcome Trust Human Developmental Biology Resource project (HDBR) and Dr Kasia Pirog gave an overview of the skeletal genetics research in the Institute. Jon Ingledew and Morten Ritso coordinated the day and organised the display in the foyer.

The tours were thoroughly enjoyed, by the visitors and by us the hosts as well. We would like to thank everyone for the interest in our work, for the interesting and inspiring questions you asked and for coming to see what we do. We hope to see you again soon!

‘Very informative and interesting. Didn’t appreciate the wide range of activities occurring on site’ Michael, Morpeth

‘.. wonderfully stimulating.. lots of knowledge and new information.. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you!’ Susan, Newcastle