Bringing Nature to the City: BioCapture at New Scientist Live 2025
Students from Queen Mary University represented the university at New Scientist Live 2025, showcasing their student-led project BioCapture to inspire connections with local green spaces.
Aliza Remedios, BSc Biology, Year 3
On the 18th of October, Julia Radwan and I (along with Dr Hone and Dr Montgomery) had the amazing opportunity to represent Queen Mary at New Scientist Live 2025. Our main aim was to speak to other science enjoyers and encourage the importance of connecting with our local green spaces, specifically through our website BioCapture. It is a student-led project which intends to engage the inhabitants of Tower Hamlets (and other urban areas) with nature and wildlife through fun forms of interactive media.
I enjoyed speaking to the wide range of people, from primary school children to retired researchers, as they never fail to teach you something new. My favourite part was talking to environmental activists and learning about current methods used to combat habitat decline due to urbanisation. This is because my project for the website is a flash game that I've coded about bird species and their adaptations to the urban lifestyle.
The whole event itself was very insightful because we also had a chance to walk around and engage with other stalls and absorb knowledge about new technology and ongoing research in all fields of STEM. I had a wonderful time and hope to take all the feedback we received to better improve BioCapture in the future.