Multilingual Community Visit: Hellenic School of Manchester (Salford)

Description

As part of a Diversity in Science Grant awarded from the Biochemical Society, a visit to a local community-run Greek language school was arranged featuring bilingual PhD students from the School of Mathematics (Marianthi Moschou) and the School of Computer Science (Rigina Skeva‎ and Michail Vamvakaris). Two sessions were run with different age groups (~40 children), with each of the presenters giving a little background about their research and showing videos to demonstrate how interesting maths and computer science can be. The children were then split into three groups and each researcher took them through the process of machine learning using a simple game of hexapawn and an interactive game tree. The participants enjoyed the session and particularly the chance to interact in their own community language, leaving comments such as: “”, “I wish we did this everytime” and “Learning maths in Greek was super cool. Computer Science is cool too though.”

This visit was part of the multilingual strand of the MIB’s Programme of Public Engagement with Research and Researchers, aiming to create more outreach opportunities for overseas staff and students whilst engaging under-served audiences.

Period	25 May 2019
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	Local