Science Storytelling pilot project aims:- Engage rural Welsh communities to build science capital Science capital encompasses a person's science-related qualifications, understanding, knowledge, interest and social contact. The extent of one's science capital can dictate aspirations related to scientific pursuits, not just for those exposed to science, but for their families as well (according to the Science Aspirations and Career Choice: Age 10-14 (ASPIRES) project). This project will utilise a communications channel that has a traditional presence in Welsh society to bring science and its discoveries to individuals in rural communities that do not typically have access to science programming. By engaging these communities it is hoped that participants will take on an improved understanding of the role of science in their lives and spark their interest in engaging further with science and thereby build science capital within their homes and communities. Stimulate an interest in science for unengaged participants broadly Beyond reaching rural Welsh communities, by utilising the existing cultural medium of storytelling this project will bring together diverse groups across Welsh society that are engaged in the storytelling community but may not be engaged with science. This provides an opportunity to reach new audiences with scientific programming. By reaching unengaged groups it is hoped that the programme will stimulate an interest in these groups to learn more about the topics presented or to attend other science focused events in the future. Empower scientists to communicate their research to non-technical audiences Scientists have amazing stories to tell, but they are often deterred from engaging those outside of their field or discipline as science is frequently depicted as unintelligible to non-specialists. The informal atmosphere of science storytelling provides a unique and exciting platform through which scientists can reach new audiences and foster connections with attendees and contributors. It is envisioned that by utilising science storytelling and providing training for participants, this project will increase the confidence of our speakers from the science community to share their message with a wider audience and encourage them to take part in other science communications events in the future, further spreading their work.

This new play about women and astronomy will be on a UK tour from June 2013. STELLA tells the story of two female astronomers: Caroline Herschel from the C18th and Jessica Bell, a fictional radio astronomer from the C21st: Jess, a lecturer at University College, London is invited to write about her favourite female astronomer from the past and so, Jess arrives in Bath to research the life of Caroline Herschel. The action of this piece unfolds as a double narrative: two women from different times simultaneously inhabit the same house in Bath. The intention is for our audience, whilst engaged emotionally in the personal challenges of both astronomers, to perhaps consider {consciously or even subconsciously} the concept of Time and Space. The character of Jess also offers a contemporary insight into the Herschel legacy which undoubtedly enriched the study of later astronomers and cosmologists. The premise of the play is that Caroline's concern for the astronomers of the future was a passionate driving force that fed into the rigor and exactitude of both her observations and her charts.This theme of Past and Future is fundamental to the play: we learn that Jess' daughter, in the midst of the Arab Spring, has become an intern at the new Library of Alexandria - and so the memory of Hypatia {350AD to 415AD}, the very first female astronomer, also ripples through the piece. Ultimately by linking the role of women through the ages with the study of the universe, we hope to show that the search for understanding and truth is the meeting point for all women, men, scientists and artists, and that this meeting point deepens our experience of the world we live in and nourishes the human psyche; that the challenges of the female astronomer are relevant to all women " the audience choked on the bared emotions and the wonderment of people seeing deep space for the first time" The Guardian, John Vidal on STELLA'S performed reading in May 2012. Our tour includes Greenwich Theatre, The Old Market in Brighton, The Mill at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, The Rose Kingston, BT Studio at Oxford Playhouse and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. At present, we are touring to eleven venues, with an expected total of twenty performances and an audience total of 2,320. However if funding is achieved from the STFC, we will be able to expand STELLA'S tour considerably; we hope to play at least two festivals this Summer and already have strong interest from theatres for the Autumn.

In the UK, as in virtually every developed country, it is widely accepted that we need more people studying and working at all levels in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). STEM industries are vital elements of the UK economy and are predicted to expand relative to other fields. But there is a widespread consensus that there is a STEM skills gap and that this gap is growing with fears that the predicted lack of appropriately qualified STEM graduates and workers with STEM technical skills will impact negatively on the UK economy. There is also a widely accepted case for the need to broaden the gender, ethnic and social class profile of those who study STEM post-16, particularly in the physical sciences. It is therefore a matter of urgency for research to understand the factors affecting STEM participation and the reasons why many young people choose not to study these subjects post-16. This study ('ASPIRES2') will extend the unique dataset developed by the first ASPIRES study (RES-179-25-0008), which tracked the development of young people's science and career aspirations from age 10-14. ASPIRES1 surveyed over 9,000 children when they were in primary school (age 10/11) and then conducted further surveys when the cohort reached secondary school (surveying 5,600 students at age 12/13 and c.5000 at age 13/14). Alongside the surveys, researchers longitudinally tracked a group of children and their parents, conducting interviews with 92 young people and 78 parents in Year 6,following them up again in Year 8 and 9. The new study aims to understand how young people develop their science and career aspirations over the next important five years of their lives (from age 14-19). It will explore changing influences of the family, school, careers education and social identities and inequalities on these young people's science and career aspirations and, crucially, will relate these to their actual subject choices and attainment in national GCSE examinations and their post-16 choices. This tracking of young people's aspirations and educational outcomes comprises the vital 'final link' in our tracking of this cohort. To achieve this goal, the project will conduct two surveys with a nationally representative sample of c.7-10,000 students per sweep. The students will be drawn from the same age cohort as the previous ASPIRES survey, and will be conducted when students are in Year 11 (age 15/16) and Year 13 (age 17/18). This will provide us with an authoritative picture of the developing views of young people from age 10-19. Interviews will also be conducted in Year 11 and Year 13 with c.80 students and 60 of their parents, all of whom have been previously tracked by the researchers from Year 6. We will also statistically analyse national datasets for those who took part in the very first survey (Y6), to explore how early attitudes and/or factors may relate to later outcomes (e.g. GCSE attainment, post-16 choices). The project will collaborate with two science organisations (the Institute of Physics and the Science Council) to develop ways of engaging families and young people with key project messages around STEM careers. Collaboration 1 will focus on translating project messages for parent audiences, via social and popular media formats (e.g. through a series of articles placed in the popular print media such as supermarket magazines and by using Twitter and social networking sites). Collaboration 2 will develop an 'app' (computer application software) to develop an interactive quiz that can convey key project messages to young people in an engaging, interactive format. We also hope to enlist the help of schools and science teachers to promote the use of this app among students. ASPIRES2 addresses the urgent need for a deeper understanding of how student aspirations are shaped, offering a unique opportunity to extend existing knowledge from 10-19, through key points in students' educational careers.

In the UK, as in virtually every developed country, it is widely accepted that we need more people studying and working at all levels in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). STEM industries are vital elements of the UK economy and are predicted to expand relative to other fields. But there is a widespread consensus that there is a STEM skills gap and that this gap is growing with fears that the predicted lack of appropriately qualified STEM graduates and workers with STEM technical skills will impact negatively on the UK economy. There is also a widely accepted case for the need to broaden the gender, ethnic and social class profile of those who study STEM post-16, particularly in the physical sciences. It is therefore a matter of urgency for research to understand the factors affecting STEM participation and the reasons why many young people choose not to study these subjects post-16. This study ('ASPIRES2') will extend the unique dataset developed by the first ASPIRES study (RES-179-25-0008), which tracked the development of young people's science and career aspirations from age 10-14. ASPIRES1 surveyed over 9,000 children when they were in primary school (age 10/11) and then conducted further surveys when the cohort reached secondary school (surveying 5,600 students at age 12/13 and c.5000 at age 13/14). Alongside the surveys, researchers longitudinally tracked a group of children and their parents, conducting interviews with 92 young people and 78 parents in Year 6,following them up again in Year 8 and 9. The new study aims to understand how young people develop their science and career aspirations over the next important five years of their lives (from age 14-19). It will explore changing influences of the family, school, careers education and social identities and inequalities on these young people's science and career aspirations and, crucially, will relate these to their actual subject choices and attainment in national GCSE examinations and their post-16 choices. This tracking of young people's aspirations and educational outcomes comprises the vital 'final link' in our tracking of this cohort. To achieve this goal, the project will conduct two surveys with a nationally representative sample of c.7-10,000 students per sweep. The students will be drawn from the same age cohort as the previous ASPIRES survey, and will be conducted when students are in Year 11 (age 15/16) and Year 13 (age 17/18). This will provide us with an authoritative picture of the developing views of young people from age 10-19. Interviews will also be conducted in Year 11 and Year 13 with c.80 students and 60 of their parents, all of whom have been previously tracked by the researchers from Year 6. We will also statistically analyse national datasets for those who took part in the very first survey (Y6), to explore how early attitudes and/or factors may relate to later outcomes (e.g. GCSE attainment, post-16 choices). The project will collaborate with two science organisations (the Institute of Physics and the Science Council) to develop ways of engaging families and young people with key project messages around STEM careers. Collaboration 1 will focus on translating project messages for parent audiences, via social and popular media formats (e.g. through a series of articles placed in the popular print media such as supermarket magazines and by using Twitter and social networking sites). Collaboration 2 will develop an 'app' (computer application software) to develop an interactive quiz that can convey key project messages to young people in an engaging, interactive format. We also hope to enlist the help of schools and science teachers to promote the use of this app among students. ASPIRES2 addresses the urgent need for a deeper understanding of how student aspirations are shaped, offering a unique opportunity to extend existing knowledge from 10-19, through key points in students' educational careers.

CCP9 has a large group of researchers in electronic structure in the UK that develops, implements and applies computational methods in condensed matter. The electronic structure of condensed matter underpins a vast range of research in Materials Science, including but not limited to areas such as semiconductors, superconductors, magnetism, biological systems, surfaces and catalysis. The computational methods are very powerful in helping us to understand complex processes and develop new technologically important materials. The researchers in CCP9 develop first-principles methods to solve for the electronic structure of materials and obtain materials properties. First principles methods employ the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics as starting point and do not rely upon experimental input. Our calculations therefore predict the behaviour of materials without bias, adding insight independent from experiment that helps us to explain why materials behave as they do. As computers become cheaper and more powerful each year and the methods become more accurate we are able to solve for more complex structured materials, now with many thousands of atoms which means that the areas of CCP9 research are broadening from traditional electronic structure into, for example, biological systems, large scale magnetism, matter in extreme conditions and exotic materials with highly correlated electrons such as spintronic technologies. The methods are also widely used beyond academia, particularly in industry with materials modelling now an important part of the materials discovery workflow. The CCP9 community develops a number of major, internationally leading codes for electronic structure solution and these codes run on the whole range of computational architectures available to us today from PCs to national and international supercomputing facilities, and we support as much as possible new chip architectures such as Arm and GPU. Not only do we develop codes for these machines but also train a large number of people to understand the underlying science and use the codes through many workshops, training sessions, hands-on courses and also to present work at the CCP9 networking meetings. Throughout all of this our leading experts, both UK and internationally, engage with the community particularly our young researchers to train and enthuse. CCP9 is a strong partner with our EU colleagues in the Psi-k network reaching many thousands of electronic structure code developers, software engineers and applications scientists. Density functional theory is the workhorse of our electronic structure methods that is highly effective and beneficial, but its accuracy is limited and for some important classes of materials, more advanced methods are needed. Such beyond-DFT methods have become important as they can solve more complex problems; their accuracy giving them greater predictive power. Our proposal develops our electronic structure technology, both DFT and beyond, by improving interoperability between codes and broadening the properties that they can calculate. Other work focuses on addressing the accuracy of beyond-DFT methods for different problems by comparing different codes and theories, and with experiments, ensuring these new methods are accurate, consistent and efficient. This EPSRC CCP call is an important part of CCP9's research strategy with funding that is needed to provide the training and networking to support the UK electronic structure community and also for access to highly qualified scientists/software engineers at CoSeC.