Dr Suzie Imber, Associate Professor of Space Physics and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Students) at the University of Leicester, gave 6 talks to more than 500 school pupils, teachers and members of the public whilst she was visiting Norfolk last week.

Last week, the Blake Studio was the venue for a public talk in which Suzie talked about her experiment on the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury (her favourite planet) and her time as a research scientist at NASA amongst other things. She also talked about her interest in mountaineering which led to her writing a computer programme that discovered many uncharted mountains in South America. She is now in the process of climbing all of them!

Then, on Friday morning, Norwich School hosted over 160 Year 5 and 6 pupils from Heartsease Primary, Lionwood Junior, George White Junior, Cantley Primary and Blofield Primary for an exciting and interesting talk on space and how to train to be an astronaut. Suzie was keen to emphasise that astronauts need a range of skills and personality types to be able to work effectively as a team.

Suzie participated in, and won, the BBC2 show ‘Astronauts: do you have what it takes?’, enduring many physical and mental challenges. The programme is currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Her visit was funded and organised by the Ogden Trust (a charitable Trust which aims to promotes the teaching and learning of physics), with Norwich School providing the Blake Studio as a venue for two of the talks as well as transport for approximately 120 primary pupils from Cantley, Blofield and Heartsease Primary Schools on Friday morning.