IGHI Demo Day 2025: Connecting Ideas, Collaborating Across Centres

IGHI colleagues interacting during Demo Day

IGHI’s second Demo Day brought staff together to celebrate the diverse work across the Institute’s centres and teams.

On 1 May, the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) hosted the second edition of its annual Demo Day – a vibrant, full-day in-person event held at the Sir Alexander Fleming Building on Imperial’s South Kensington Campus.

The day brought together around 80 colleagues from across the Institute to celebrate the breadth of work taking place within IGHI’s Centres of excellence and teams, and to recognise the Institute’s achievements. 

It was a really great opportunity to meet other people working at IGHI and understand more about what other groups are researching. Demo Day participant IGHI staff 

These include the Centre for Health Policy, the Climate Cares Centre team, the Education team, the Fleming Initiative, the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, the Helix Centre, the NIHR funded North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC), and the Operations team.

The event offered a dynamic platform to showcase recent and ongoing projects, share their impact through talks, stands, and interactive activities, and very importantly, spark new connections and collaborations across the Institute.

Talks, speed networking & scavenger hunt

In the first part of the day, attendees took part in talks, speed networking, and a surprise scavenger hunt around the campus.

The Pecha Kucha session challenged presenters from all teams to engage the audience in a concise, visually driven format. Each presentation featured a slideshow advancing automatically every 20 seconds, pushing speakers to introduce their teams and share highlights of their latest and ongoing work and achievements in a dynamic way.

Dedicated time was set aside for speed networking between talks, allowing IGHI staff to connect and exchange ideas in a fast-paced format.

The scavenger hunt was a great success: seven IGHI teams explored the South Kensington campus in search of clues that would lead them to answer questions about the IGHI’s Centres. While most teams knew that the Royal College of Art was a founding partner in the creation of the Helix Centre, fewer were aware of the original location of the Royal College of Science’s building in South Kensington.

The ‘Dream Team’ – made up of Dr Leila Shepherd, Professor Bryony Dean Franklin, Phoebe Averill, Dr Gaby Judah, and Melanie Perkins – claimed the prestigious IGHI Scavenger Hunt Cup and will be defending their title at the next IGHI Demo Day.

For those unable to take part in the outdoor activity, an indoor alternative was available, ensuring everyone had the opportunity to join the fun.

Demos, stands & unconference sessions

In the second part of the day, participants explored demos and stands showcasing IGHI’s wide-ranging work – from antimicrobial resistance, patient safety, and climate change, to healthcare design and medical robotics.

These interactive demos and stands gave each Centre the opportunity to highlight their projects, innovations, and impact – and to exchange ideas with other teams.

This was followed by unconference sessions, a participant-led format that differs from traditional expert-driven conferences. Unconferences prioritise the involvement of attendees, helping them solve problems, raise topics they care about, or answer specific questions in a collaborative setting.

We organised four unconference sessions, with two running in parallel followed by the remaining two, delivered in the same format across breakout rooms. 

In the session led by the IGHI’s Wellbeing Working Group, participants discussed the impact of formal organisational values on how we work at IGHI. Using Imperial’s values – respect, integrity, excellence, innovation, and collaboration – as a starting point, the group explored whether these values reflect what matters to IGHI staff. A key insight was that many attendees do see organisational values as ‘valuable’, especially as they provide a framework with which to understand and describe acceptable behaviours.

The Learning & Development (L&D) unconference session focused on how the IGHI L&D Working Group can better support staff in meeting their learning and development needs. Attendees generously shared ideas, offering fresh direction and renewed energy to the group. Stay tuned for the L&D action plan, coming soon!

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Working Group hosted “A Cultural Collage”, a hands-on craft session where attendees contributed to a collaborative artwork celebrating IGHI’s diversity. Each participant created a piece symbolising their culture or upbringing, reflecting the richness of perspectives across the Institute.

Finally, the session “How to Talk to People About Climate Change”, facilitated by Dr Daniella Watson from the Climate Cares Centre, highlighted the importance of using open discovery questions (“how” and “what”), understanding different responses, and improving communication skills, especially for climate change conversations. Those who attended the session also valued the opportunity to network, share practical skills, and achieve greater emotional understanding.

We would like to thank this year's IGHI Demo Day Working Group members – Dr Daniella Watson, Dr Elena Zattera, Jack Cooper, Jesica Presstt, Jessica Shields, Dr Tetiana Lunova, Victoria Murphy – for their dedication organising the event, led by Dr Laura-Maria Horga. We are also grateful to all Centres and teams for their contributions, and we look forward to next year’s event.

Photo credits in this article go to Rolando Charles.