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 agrowing 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 betweenhigh 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.