The Tactile Universe is an award-winning public engagement project based at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmolgy and Gravitation that is empowering and raising the aspirations of students with vision impairments (VI) by making current astrophysics research topics accessible to them. To date, the project has developed and used its tactile resources to help VI children experience the size and scale of our solar system and understand what gives every galaxy in the Universe its own unique colour and shape. With the support of the STFC, the project now has the chance to expand to cover even more exciting topics, and ensure its legacy in the coming years. Predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916, as part of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves were not detected until 2015, when the merging of two black holes in a distant galaxy (one of the most cataclysmic and energetic events that can occur in the Universe) caused ripples in space-time that were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) instrument. Working with LIGO scientists at the University of Portsmouth and around the UK, the Tactile Universe team will develop resources and activities suitable for VI students aged 14-16, covering the detection of, and science behind, gravitational-waves. To make sure that the project's resources, old and new, reach everybody that they can, the Tactile Universe is working to train and grow a network of presenters who will deliver activities to VI students wherever they are based. The resources that the Tactile Universe will develop during this STFC Legacy Award will also be made available online through www.tactileuniverse.org, alongside our existing tactile resources, lesson plans and guides currently shared on the website. With access to a 3D printer, anybody will be able to download and make their own set of tactile resources to feel the awe inspiring shapes and structures of galaxies and understand gravitational-waves, one of the most exciting areas in astrophysics today.

The Tactile Universe is an award-winning public engagement project at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth. The project aims to make astrophysics research accessible to people with vision impairments (VI), with a particular focus on children aged 9 - 14. The Tactile Universe is different from other VI-accessible astronomy outreach projects in that 1) we are engaging the VI community with current research, rather than the more basic astronomy concepts like constellations, and 2) we are showing that astrophysics can be a possible route of study and future career, not just a hobby. The Project Lead is Dr Nic Bonne, who is a blind astrophysicist himself. Over 16,500 school pupils in the UK are recorded as having a vision impairment as their primary or secondary special education need. Research by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) shows that the attainment levels of these school pupils with VI are consistently lower than that for all pupils. University physics students with VI are almost non-existent. Through this project, we aim to inspire and engage with this underserved audience in physics public engagement, and open up astrophysics to a community that is under-represented in the field. The project uses 3D printers to create tactile 3D models of galaxies, where the image is raised above the base depending on the brightness of each pixel. We have already successfully completed a pilot project, and are now working with local schools during Phase One. This Nucleus Award proposal is for Phase Two of the project, where we will greatly expand the reach of the project, making our resources accessible to any child with VI in the UK, and ensuring that the project becomes self-sustainable beyond the current timeline. We will do this by working with our project partners RNIB, the South East Physics Network (SEPnet), the Ogden Trust, and the Royal Astronomical Society, through four interlinked strands. We will: 1. Create files and documentation needed to make and use our resources freely available online under a Creative Commons license, so that anyone with access to a 3D printer can recreate our models and deliver our activities. 2. Make kits containing our 3D models, activity guides, and any other resources required to run our activities. These kits will be distributed to public engagement and education organisations that cannot 3D print their own set of resources. 3. Train other public engagement practitioners and educators across the UK to use our resources, and connect attendees with their local VI-supporting schools and wider community. 4. Tour the Tactile Universe visiting remote communities to deliver sessions in schools that are not within our usual reach or that of the people who attend our training sessions (e.g. remote Wales, Scotland, Cornwall).

Citizen science provides the public with the opportunity to engage with science in a meaningful way that can have mutual benefit for participants and researchers. It allows people to make authentic contributions to research while simultaneously learning more about a topic. In the classroom this has the potential to impact on a young person's attitude towards and relationship with science. By showing children that they're able to make valuable contributions to real science, citizen science provides an opportunity to nurture their 'science identity' and build science capital (i.e. experiences in, knowledge of, and connections with science), influencing choices to continue with science post-16. It can also develop scientific literacy by giving students direct research experience and knowledge of 'how science works'. Young Citizen Scientists with 'Zooniverse in School' will be the first large-scale programme to put STFC citizen science in schools, supporting STFC's vision of a society that values and participates in scientific endeavour by engaging children (9-12 years) with real scientific research. Through the world's largest and most popular citizen science platform, The Zooniverse, they will join volunteers from around the world to participate in research that would otherwise be unfeasible. The research projects on the platform, which span all disciplines, typically involve multiple volunteers analysing data by identifying or classifying objects in a series of images. Zooniverse in Schools extends this by enabling young people to undertake additional analysis of the images in a series of classroom activities using the newly-developed 'Zoo Notes' app. The app allows students to view all contributions made on a particular image, and thus visualise and interpret the analysed data before discussing their results with the researchers. Zooniverse in Schools will focus on two research areas; Science Scribbler, where volunteers identify and categorise images of viruses generated at Diamond Light Source to improve our understanding of how viruses multiply in cells and Galaxy Zoo, where volunteers categorise images of galaxies to help us understand what their shape can tell us about the galaxies and the Universe as a whole. In the first year, three online or in-person workshops on each topic will take place in schools, augmented with hands-on activities and discussions to help students develop their analytical and enquiry skills. In the second year, we will deliver an online Zooniverse in Schools Nationwide Challenge through live, multi-school webinars, pre-recorded video content, Q&A sessions and simple DIY demonstrations, closing with a celebration event. This will enable us to scale-up the reach of the programme while still providing support, encouragement and contact with researchers. The sequential activities give students and their teachers the opportunity to explore and understand the research process in depth and experience the collaborative nature of the science for themselves. They provide direct contact with the researchers involved to discuss the real-world impact of this research, focussing on the students' contribution. The activities give the opportunity to explore the facilities and techniques used to image the data and the methods we use to train computers to analyse large data sets (investigating concepts like algorithms and decision trees). Zooniverse in Schools will build upon Oxford Physics' work in engaging young people from backgrounds that are underrepresented within STEM. We have already developed and piloted, in a series of workshops, 'Zoo Notes' with our local target schools. We will now work with a number of partners (Diamond Light Source, The Ogden Trust, SEPnet, I'm a Scientist and Abingdon Science Partnership) to enhance the impact of the programme and ensure we reach young people who will benefit the most; those who live in the most deprived and remote areas of the UK.