About RESILIENCE

RESILIENCE is a training organisation based at the University of Birmingham, Heriot Watt University, Teesside University (National Horizons Centre), and University College London (Department of Biochemical Engineering) and is involved in providing technical and professional skills to support the UK medicines manufacturing industry. We provide end-to-end training in laboratory, data analysis, and career development skills needed to work in the pharmaceutical sector. Part of the vision of RESILIENCE is to build and maintain a resilient future workforce by creating engaging pathways into pharmaceutical industry careers for school and college students. One framework for this approach is an inclusive, wide-reaching
STEM outreach programme that provides fun, creative activities that help students gain insightful experiences into the world of medicines manufacturing.

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What we’ll be doing at Festival of The Girl
At Festival of The Girl, RESILIENCE will showcase interactive activities to help young people experience the bioprocess engineering laboratory where advanced medicines like gene therapies and immune cell therapies are made. The biochemical engineering laboratory will be experienced in an immersive way using virtual reality, which is our most popular activity. Girls and boys will go on an exciting journey of the cell where they will be able to observe cells making copies of themselves and the dynamic, fascinating process of protein translation from genes. They will also be able to work as research scientists in the virtual lab performing a range of tasks including diluting and weighing chemicals and setting up bioreactors that are used to grow cells.
We will teach young girls and boys how to use a micropipette to precisely measure volumes and help them learn that this is an important step of a controlled experiment. Our alginate hydrogel activity will be the basis for introducing how biomaterials can be used for clinical delivery of chemical and biological medicines. We will encourage young people to become organic synthetic chemists by building small molecule drugs using our molecular modelling kit. They will also model the structures of viral vectors using colourful clay and learn how viruses can be used to make powerful immune cell therapies that can cure cancer as well as develop gene
therapies that cure genetic disorders. Our laboratory stand will be an adventurous journey into the life of a biochemical engineer that will inspire young girls and boys to work towards medicines manufacturing careers.