Innovation & Research

What you can do the change the world

What research has happened already?

We know young people are the most creative and imaginative and we want to release that potential and value their ideas and innovations to help the planet. Students have developed ideas which have had significant impact and we have many examples in climate education, radiation monitoring, genome annotation, STEM in Africa (SIA) to name a few.

The Biojoyversity platform provides a unique mechanism for students to get advice from a phenomenal group of advisors made up of leading climate scientists, industrialists, educationalists and scientists. The Earthshot prize didn’t have capacity for a youth wing so we decided to establish this mechanism which can support young people to aspire themselves to winning the Earthshot prize in future and in the meantime have agency and be valued to positively help tackle the planetary crisis.

We want to encourage school students to think outside the box, know they will find support and that their ideas are valued and make this a positive experience to help tackle the climate crisis.

We have seen amazing research school students have done, for example putting a payload in space using CERN technology and reporting data to NASA, (students published in Advances in Space Research www.sciencedirect.com), Krtin Nithiyanandam’s work on Alzheimer’s disease, students working on Multiple Sclerosis as well as diabetes and contributing to analysis of Spitzer Space Telescope data. We should never underestimate the potential of young people – the launch of the Institute for Research in Schools ( video below, founded by Becky Parker) gives a glimpse of the amazing work that students do.

Biojoyversity focuses on valuing and promoting school students to rise to their potential. Working with Katherine Priestley during the pandemic it was clear that young people are passionate about the climate and biodiversity.

They gave talks to their peers, to University students at the Conference of Youth at Strathclyde University, and empowered with knowledge and understanding from the MIT Sloan Climate Interactive climate simulator En-ROADS they showed their vision for the future as well as working with the Natural History Museum on biodiversity. Biojoyversity provides a way to support and encourage young people to have the courage of their convictions and be confident in their amazing ideas.