Schools

The Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) is committed keeping the public informed and engaged in important research findings and discoveries in biomedical research. On these pages you will find out about specific activities and projects for students and teachers.
If you would like more information please contact Filipa Carreira Barbosa or Ana Godinho.

Outreach to schools

IGC scientists regularly take IGC research to schools in the greater Lisbon area and even beyond. We have taken part in schools’ science days, career fairs, science fairs. Read (here) about our outreach activities to schools. If you would like us to visit your school, please e-mail Filipa Barbosa (fbarbosa@igc.gulbenkian.pt) and Ana Godinho (agodinho@igc.gulbenkian.pt) with information on your school and the type of activity you would be interested in.

School Visits

Since 2001 we have run a regular schools’ visit programme, which has allowed just over 120 secondary schools and 4400 students to visit the IGC.

This programme is now temporarily suspended, for evaluation and re-structuring, in order to fully achieve our aims, those of teachers and students.

Our outreach and project-support activities, for students and teachers, are still running, and we invite you to contact us if you would like our input into your projects.

Internships/Summer projects

If you are a secondary school student or science undergraduate and would like to spend some time in one of the IGC research groups/labs, please contact Filipa Carreira Barbosa. Visit Research at the IGC to find out more about research projects in each group.

IGC-Bragança City Council partnership

As part of an agreement established between the IGC and the City Council of Bragança (a city in the Northeast of Portugal) six secondary school students will carry out 2-week research projects at IGC labs, during the Easter 2009 holidays. The students will be selected by their teachers, based on their academic achievements.

Bioinformatics at School

This project is being developed by the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Unit. Its main aims are to provide bioinformatics resources for secondary-school, based on current research projects, with an aim to encourage and support enquiry-based learning of science in the classroom. For more information on this project, please contact Isabel Marques.

Darwin-inspired experiments for schools

To mark Charles Darwin's 200th birthday in 2009, we developed an experiment for high school students, which illustrates how Darwin's theories are still very relevant in modern biomedical research. Our experiment is based on one of the activities developed by the Wellcome Trust, as part of the Darwin200 celebrations.
This project is now in it's evaluation stage and we are no longer supplying kits for schools. Visit this section again soon to read feedback from teachers and future plans.

Online resources

We are developing online and print resources for primary and secondary schools. We will post these resources here as they become available.