Nuffield Curriculum Centre

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Portrait of a Nuffield Science Bursary student appears at the National Portrait Gallery
Thu, 2 November 2006

The Nuffield Foundation.

A portrait of Lydia Arnold, a 2005 Nuffield Science Bursary student is currently appearing in the Exceptional Youth exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Lydia accepting her prize at the BA CREST Science Fair in February 2006The exhibition celebrates the achievements of 19 inspirational young Britons and Lydia Arnold appears alongside people such as Daniel Radcliffe, Theo Walcott and Lily Cole. The aim of the exhibition is to encourage more young people to believe that they too have the ability to make things happen.

Lydia took part in a Nuffield Bursary placement during the Summer of 2005, while studying at Audenshaw School, Oldham. Her bursary placement was at Pion Laser Laboratory at Salford University. During her time there she designed and made a robotic laser hand that moves via corresponding signals from a glove worn by its operator.

Lydia was then selected to appear at the BA CREST Science Fair where she won the International Science and Engineering Prize. Her prize was to attend the International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis which she did in May this year. At the fair she went on to win the Patent and Trademark Office Society Prize for creativity, technological innovation and commercial promise.

Lydia has now gone on to study medicine at Manchester University and hopes that the robotic hand she has engineered could form the basis of technology for use in remote operations or prosthetic limbs. Of her experience she says "It’s really scary. I did one thing and all these doors have opened. People tell me this is what happens in life. I’m starting to believe it now".

The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery runs to April 2007. To find out more about it and to learn how Lydia's Nuffield Science Bursary took her from Salford University to Indianapolis, see the Exceptional Youth website.

If you are a post-16 science student and are interested in taking a Nuffield Bursary in Summer 2007, see the Nuffield Science Bursaries website.

Former Nuffield science bursary students from the Summer of 2006 can self-nominate online for a place at the next BA CREST Science Fair in February 2007 by clicking here.