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Our director, Jo Foster, is already seeing students use AI as part of scientific research, and believes they can be at the heart of the government’s latest AI ambitions.

January 2025

Last year, a group of secondary school students from Cheshire used AI to detect the Higgs boson and other exotic particles in data from the Large Hadron Collider. Another group of young people from a state school in Birmingham evaluated cross-domain AI to determine how useful it would be in detecting the rarest, most interesting particle events from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

 

Alan Barr, Professor of Particle Physics from the University of Oxford, reviewed the teams’ research. He told us that, despite only being in secondary school, they were working on concepts usually not considered until postgraduate level. Giving them to opportunity to explore their own interests and passions, particularly when it comes to the relationship between science and AI, enabled these students to realise potential far beyond their academic years.

 

Both these groups of students were taking part in real science research projects provided by IRIS, the Institute for Research in Schools.

 

One of the key themes of yesterday’s AI action plan announced by the Government was to grow the AI talent in the UK and increase the diversity of that AI talent pool. The action plan states that it wants to build on the strengths within the UK. We know these strengths exist, and we see them in the students who get the chance to pursue real research through our projects.

 

UK schools are brimming with curious and dedicated young people who will form the backbone for the delivery of this ambitious AI plan. But as things stand, these young people aren’t receiving a curriculum which supports them to develop and nurture these skills. It’s no good waiting until young people leave university or school before engaging them in this sort of field. We must allow young people to start exploring these exciting opportunities while they are still in school, or we face another lost generation of talent, which is what we have seen over the past 20 years. Despite significant efforts, we have failed to increase the diversity in any significant way in our STEM graduates.

 

Through every child having access to real research and innovation opportunities in school, we can start to build and retain a diverse pipeline of skilled young people for the UK, which will really allow the UK to survive and thrive in this new ecosystem.

 

Let’s get real research opportunities on the national curriculum and support the next generation in this exciting new field.

COMMENT

Students still struggle to see themselves as ‘science people’. How can we make STEM more inclusive?

 

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