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News – BrainBus won a prize!

In 2021, BrainBus won the British Neuroscience Association’s Award for Public Engagement of Neuroscience. You can read more about the award here and here.

About BrainBus

BrainBus is a scientific outreach initiative led by a team of diverse and enthusiastic neuroscientists at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (MRC CBU), University of Cambridge. We bring interactive neuroscience activities into primary school classrooms to inspire children from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM to consider a career in science.

Our goal is to provide a pivotal outreach experience by introducing pupils to subjects, careers, and role models that they may not otherwise access, at no cost to schools or parents/caregivers. 

What happens in a BrainBus visit? 

A BrainBus visit starts with a short introduction to the brain and its different areas to give pupils a greater understanding of their own brains and the wide range of questions that science can help us to answer. We use 3D-printed brains of both humans and animals in our teaching to help bring this material to life. This is followed by two interactive experiments to give pupils hands-on experience as scientific investigators. At the end of each session, each pupil receives a tailor-made squishy brain with our BrainBus logo.  

You can see examples of some of our activities and additional resources for fun here. 

Development of the BrainBus activity programme was supported by education and outreach experts at the University of Cambridge and Eloquential. 

How are we funded?

BrainBus was launched in 2019 as part of the MRC CBU’s Equality and Diversity programme. Our activity has been funded and supported by the University of Cambridge Diversity Fund. 

Message from our Project Leads

BrainBus Project Leads, Rogier Kievit and Kate Baker, have said:

“We hope that BrainBus will help in allowing children from all backgrounds to consider a career in science as something they consider to be possible for them. We are excited at how much the teachers and children have enjoyed it so far, and are working on how to further expand our reach.”

Feedback from schools

Teacher feedback:

• “It was really informative – children were all really engaged and enjoyed themselves.’

Pupil’s favourite parts:

• “My favourite part was doing the tapping game with the stopwatch because we don’t usually do that.” 
• Another pupil’s was “learning about the brains because I found it interesting how unbelievable it is that there is brains.

Contact us   

If you are interested in learning more about BrainBus or would like to request a classroom visit, please contact us at: 

E-mail: aeysha.fida@mrc-cbu.ac.uk