Public engagement

Deborah Goberdhan has the lead role in promoting and highlighting Outreach activities in DPAG. She is particularly interested in encouraging further participation in programmes within the university designed to inspire school children from a diverse range of backgrounds to apply to Oxford. Deborah and members of her group (past and present) have been involved in events such as Soapbox Science and have also written a range of articles and blogs targeted at the general public.

festival & Events

Deborah Goberdhan was a featured speaker in Soapbox Science 2012. She is also involved in engaging with the general public through events organised through the CRUK Oxford Centre, for example, through talks about the research that her group is doing. A key focus of her lab is to work out ways of blocking the production of tiny vesicles secreted by cancer cells, called exosomes, which have been implicated in tumour progression. At the CRUK Supporters and Operations Department Day, June 2015, the audience took part in an interactive demonstration to model the role of exosomes in metastatic spread.

^{Members of the audience model the role of exosomes in metastatic spread, CRUK Supporters and Operations Department Day, June 2015, Kassam Stadium (Oxford), June 2015.}

Other members of the lab are involved in a range of Outreach events. Dan Stevens (Clinical Academic Fellow) spoke about prostate cancer at the Movember event in November 2014, which Amy Fairchild, an FHS Biology project student working in the group helped to organise.  Sumeth Perera (DPhil student) has given a talk, 'Faith in molecular biology' at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy.

Media & Blog coverage

Deborah Goberdhan has had a long standing interest in communicating her research through the media, for example, ‘The Times Higher Education Supplement’ (17 December 1999) and more recently through blogs, for example, The Independent and a commissioned post for the science outreach section of the community blog for developmental biologists, the Node. Lab members have also written research-oriented articles for the general public and to highlight the broader significance of their work. Sumeth Perera was runner-up for the Peter Beaconsfield Prize in Physiological Sciences, 2014 based on his essay discussing the wider impact of his work and the potential translational implications.

back to School

The Goberdhan lab has had a range of contacts with schools and is keen on developing this further. For example, Deborah Goberdhan has been an Oxford alumni speaker at UNIQ Summer School - Oncology (2013, 2014), her group has hosted year 11 school students  undertaking lab work experience and members of her group help in local schools.