VIDEO: Igniting passion for STEM education

Professor Lynne Bianchi
Vice Dean for Social Responsibility, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
The University of Manchester

I think it's absolutely wonderful that the university and Aramco have come together to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists.

I'm delighted today to be hosting Aramco, on a STEM day with these most amazing Venezuelan students who have won the competition.

We're giving them an experience here today with meeting our academics, meeting our post-doctoral students, really getting a feel for real-world robotics engineering and what that means.

So the partnership with Aramco has come together over the past three years, really to look at how we can enrich the teaching of science and engineering at primary school level.

So we've done all sorts of really fantastic projects around encouraging equality, diversity, and inclusion with girls, for instance, into STEM.

Claus Ditlev Christensen
Secretary General
The World Robot Olympiad Association

Robotics really builds creativity skills.

It builds hard skills. It builds soft skills such as teamwork, communication, etc, and when you do that at an early age, you spark an interest.

Sparking interest at an early age is very important.

When you then have older students, you are then giving them opportunities to get hands-on with real-world technology. And having hands-on with real-world technology also gives opportunities to map out future career pathways.

I'm super excited to bring the Robotic Dreamers from Venezuela all the way here to the U.K.

From what they have seen, I can say it's just been an amazing experience.

Mariana Sánchez
Member of Robotic Dreamers team

I can say for all of the team that we are really impressed with all of the work and the welcoming, so really, thank you Aramco.