Mercedes Novo and Wajih Al-Soufi are founding members of XuvenCiencia, a teaching innovation group of the Lugo campus of the USC coordinated by Mercedes Novo that since 2013 has developed an ambitious science outreach project with three aspects: a week-long on-site science summer campus for teenagers, a training program for secondary school teachers and a programme that brings the research practice to the classrooms of schools and institutes using experimentation kits designed by the members of XuvenCiencia.

XuvenCiencia has been supported for several years by the FECYT and is currently developing the project Convivio de Ciencia. In this project, secondary school teachers can participate in experiments based on the seven XuvenCiencia kits through the Lifelong Learning Programme of the Training and Resources Centres (CFR) of the Xunta de Galicia (visit the Convivio Magacine).

In the group's latest project funded by the FECYT, Ciencia á feira, XuvenCiencia will take advantage of traditional markets to disseminate scientific content of interest to the rural population. Activities will be carried out in eight municipalities in the province of Lugo whose common denominator is the fact of being far from conventional centers of knowledge generation. With this project, XuvenCiencia's activities experience a leap that aims to involve both educational communities, city councils and the population in general.

Our group also organises and participates in other activities of scientific dissemination, such as the action entitled "Research in Chemistry: creative science for a better world" and the Chemistry Open Days at CIQUS to celebrate the International Year of Chemistry 2011. Many high-school students and people of all ages participated in the activities, where we showed several experiments related to light, chemistry and life.

In the links below you will find simple, engaging and appealing information about some of our research fields