London Tech Week launched at the Crick

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, came to the Francis Crick Institute to launch London Tech Week, the city's flagship festival celebrating technology and innovation.

The launch was focused on "Empowering the next generation of talent", with children from local schools coming to the Crick to get hands-on with new technologies and hear from inspiring speakers.

The Mayor was met by Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Crick, and Dr Sam Barrell, Chief Operating Officer, who first took him to the Discovery Lab where our Education team were leading a circuit-building activity. The Mayor met pupils and teachers from Edith Neville Primary School, and heard about our outreach programme from our Education team.

The Mayor then attended a tech showcase in the Crick's Manby Gallery, to get hands on with a range of new technologies. Lucy Collinson, Head of Electron Microscopy at the Crick, introduced the Mayor to the citizen science project Etch a Cell. This takes electron microscopy images of cells and asks members of the public to draw around the edge of the nucleus. This data then feeds into a central database to build 3D images of cell nuclei to measure the impact of diseases on nuclear shape.

The Mayor closed the launch with a speech in the auditorium to secondary school and university students, celebrating diversity and encouraging everyone to consider a career in tech. He finished by praising the Crick's cutting-edge science and collaborative approach, and highlighted the importance of collaboration in Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA.