An ENLIGHT Impact Ambassador Award goes to Cell Explorers research effort

cellexplorers
Mar 28
2 min read

Dr Muriel Grenon and Dr Pádraig MacNeela from the University of Galway have received the 2025 ENLIGHT Impact Ambassador Awards for their research contributions after competing at the ENLIGHT Impact confernece this year. Dr Grenon was honoured for widening participation in STEM through science outreach and Dr MacNeela was recognised for the Active* Consent programme on consent and sexual violence. Awards were presented at the ENLIGHT Impact Conference at the University of Groningen.

The ENLIGHT Impact Award 2025 to Dr Grenon acknowledges an immense amount of work produced in the recent years by a team of dedicated people involved in developing research and associated impact in our project "Widening Participation in STEM through Science Outreach" (summarised here).

This award celebrates the Cell Explorers mission to make science more accessible and engaging particularly for young people from underrepresented backgrounds by implementing research evidences.

Through an interdisciplinary effort combining different science expertises, education research, youth work, and social science, we have developed inclusive, hands-on outreach activities delivered via the Cell Explorers programme. Since 2020, we have reached over 24,000 young people, many of whom met a scientist for the first time through these efforts. We have started to work with young people in youth group engaging 100s of them in STEM activities and developping a youth worker training in collaboration with the youth work sector.

This could not have been achieved without the amazing team who was involved in running the research and delivering its impact through specific projects including the implementing the Science capital framework in our practices, developping specifically taylored training format for scientist facilitators, designing and delivering new activities like the Cell Explorers Science Clubs.

The team included Dr Sarah Carroll, Dr Shannon Stubbs, Dr Jen DeWitt, Megan Depinna from Foróige, Dr Kristin Anderson, Dr. Talia Arcari, Sarah-Beth Bradley, Dr. Silke Kleefeld, and Janic Schulte, all of whom made essential contributions to this powerful and challenging endeavour.

Dr Grenon would like to thank

the amazing local and national volunteer coordinators, community partners, academic collaborators, and the dedicated team of Cell Explorers scientist facilitators
The University of Galway, the University of Galway - College of Science and Engineering, the School of Biological and Chemical sciences for ongoing support
Research Ireland and Medtronic Foundation for research and programmatic funding
The ENLIGHT European UniversityAlliance for this honour
Áine Nic Dhomhnaill-Mhic Thaidhg and Pamela Devins for support
Lander Balza for the friendly coaching support!