Circuits! - Demonstrating the use of optical fibres in biomedical sciences

The Circuits! - project, funded through the The Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious Grant (ING1617/11/114), demonstrates how research at the intersection of physics, engineering, biology, and medicine can be presented in an interactive and educational way to a non-scientific audience. Respiratory diseases are significant contributors to avoidable morbidity and mortality and have a growing social and economic impact. With the aim of improving lung disease understanding, new techniques in fibre-based optical endomicroscopy have been recently developed. Interdisciplinary research with a focus on prevalent diseases provides a relatable context that can be used to enrich high school education. Here, we present a novel teaching methodology, developed between high school science teachers and researchers, that resembles a bench-to-bedside pathway. The methodology comprises an inexpensive educational tool (< $ 70) adapted from a clinical optical endomicroscopy system and tutorials that cover state-of-the-art research. This data set contains STL files for the 3d printing parts, templates for graphs, an instructional video, teaching material and a detailed description and trouble shooting document for the education tool.