Professor Faron Moller, Director of Technocamps (left), and Beti Williams (centre), Patron, receive the award from Nobel laureate Professor Sir Martin Evans.
Technocamps has been awarded a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) STEM Inspiration Award for Outstanding Contribution to Widening Participation, Diversity and Inclusion in STEM.
UKRI is the body overseeing all publicly funded research, encompassing all national research councils.
This award complements the publication this month of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) results, in which the Technocamps Impact Case Study submitted by Swansea University was awarded a top grade. REF is the mechanism used by the UK government to determine the distribution of research funding to the universities over the next seven years.
Technocamps, founded in 2003, is a pan-Wales schools, community and industry outreach programme based at Swansea University but with a hub in every University across Wales.
Find out about the work of Technocamps
It provides hands-on workshops to primary and secondary schools, professional development training for teachers, and digital upskilling opportunities for adult learners.
Its core remit for schools is to engage with specific groups of young people – particularly girls and those in isolated regions of the country – who disengage with STEM subjects. It then supports and encourages them to take up digital and STEM subjects at GCSE and A-level and beyond.
Its business engagement operation, the Institute of Coding (IoC) in Wales, provides digital degree apprenticeships and leads on a national programme of digital skills bootcamps delivered by each of the computer science departments in Wales.
Professor Faron Moller, Director of Technocamps, said:
“We are absolutely thrilled to have won this award. Having been considered alongside some of the most amazing initiatives in the country is humbling, and we are delighted to have the recognition for the hard work that we do.”