Now a pupil at The Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester has won a national competition to celebrate 100 years of women’s membership of The Physiological Society.
The society, which has a membership of more than 3,500 scientists around the world, invited schools to focus on the achievements of women who have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
To enter, pupils were asked to select a female winner of the Nobel Prize, research her discovery and then design a poster summarising the scientist’s findings.
Elsie Moore, a year 11 student at The Thomas Hardye School, decided to produce a poster on Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. She was part of the team that won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for discovering the key genes responsible for early embryonic development.
All the shortlisted entries were presented at the society’s annual scientific conference, with scientists voting for the best poster.
To her delight Elsie won, receiving a certificate, £50 gift voucher and personal message of congratulations from Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard herself.
The final part of the prize was a visit by Dr Carmen Coxon, a research assistant at the University of Bristol, who taught a lesson on the heart to Elsie’s class and gave a lecture to sixth formers about her research into cardiovascular disease and her academic life.
Simon Lewis, who teaches biology at The Thomas Hardye School and set the challenge for his students as a piece of homework, told SecEd: “This competition provided a focus for students to research science in a real-world context while giving them the opportunity to be creative.
“It boosted the profile of women in science and was a great way of promoting physiology.”