In the first-of-its-kind entirely student-led CREME-EECS Staff Scholarship Exchange Webinar (a shared community-of-practice between the SEMS Centre for Research in Engineering and Materials Education and the EECS Educational Scholarship Centre), 5 SEMS undergraduate students presented their ongoing STEM education research work to academic staff from the scholarship centres of both Schools.

The STEM education co-creation research projects and student presenters, all of whom were supervised and mentored by Dr Rehan Shah from SEMS through the Queen Mary Centre for Undergraduate Research were as follows:

1. ‘Making diversity count’: empowering students through inclusive STEM curricula
   Speakers: Ava Dahlia Belafonte and Allegra Celesia
2. Towards a Cross-National Mathematical Skills Inventory for Engineers
   Speaker: Ilanthiraiyan Sivagnanamoorthy
3. 'Squashing bugs not snakes': designing a Python toolkit to develop students’ programming proficiency
   Speakers: Muhie Al-Haimus and Yash Vaghela

Each presentation was approximately of 15 minutes duration, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A with the students sharing their first-hand experiences in developing innovative didactic tools designed to enhance teaching and streamline the learning process. They discussed the principles, design, implementation, and impact of these tools, from their own perspective, while reflecting on how these projects had influenced their personal learning journeys.

Their work was highly commended by several staff members from SEMS and EECS and followed up by several insightful questions and suggestions to the students motivating them towards future directions of their work.

Their academic supervisor, Dr Shah responded by noting: 'I am extremely proud of all my students involved in these projects and the success of their work is testimony to their sheer hard work and determination in persevering through high quality research alongside their existing academic commitments.'

In addition to this, Dr Shah also highlighted how thankful he was to the Queen Mary Centre for Undergraduate Research (Dr Giuseppe Viola) and the Scholarship Exchange Webinar organiser (Mr Alan Allman) for offering his students with a suitable platform to disseminate their work to academics across multiple Schools and for all their help and support for working tirelessly behind the scenes to make this a special event for the students.