Dr Rehan Shah and his group of second-year undergraduate SEMS student researchers, Mr Muhie Al Hamius and Mr Yash Vaghela, presented their research titled 'Squashing Bugs, Not Snakes': Co-creating a Python toolkit to develop students' programming proficiency to engineering educators at the UK & Ireland Engineering Education Research Network (EERN) annual conference hosted at the University of Manchester in July 2025.

Their presentation focused on examining the development and implementation of student-staff co-created Python programming toolkit resources within two undergraduate mathematics modules led by Dr Shah and highlighted the analysis and evaluation of acquired student feedback to ascertain their efficacy. The feedback from attendees was very positive with other educators advocating the need for toolkits of this kind to enhance engineering students' computing skills.

As part of another student-staff co-creation education research project titled 'Making Diversity Count': Empowering students through co-creation of inclusive STEM curricula featuring SEMS student researcher Ms Ava Belafonte, Dr Shah took on the mantle of disseminating this research at the UK Horizons in STEM Higher Education Conference hosted at Aston University in Birmingham in June 2025. This presentation focused on examining the development and implementation of student-staff co-created inclusive STEM curricula toolkit resources implemented within two of Dr Shah's undergraduate mathematics modules and highlighted the analysis and evaluation of acquired student feedback and their impact on student engagement over the past 2 years.

Dr Shah's impactful presentation generated significant coverage at the conference with one attendee taking to Linkedin to feature her reaction as one of her conference highlights by saying:

"Equality, diversity and inclusion – I promise this isn't just a tick-box exercise. We genuinely care. One of the most humbling moments was listening to Dr Rehan Shah, who reminded me personally how easy it is to miss opportunities for truly inclusive teaching."