The Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) has won a Customer Experience Special Recognition Award for its participation in the Cambridge Science Festival, held in March 2016.

Cambridge Business Improvement District (BID) held their fourth Customer Service Awards on 27 September to recognise and reward the highest levels of customer service amongst Cambridge businesses in the city. The organisation uses mystery shoppers to assess participating businesses. This year, the Cambridge Science Festival has been included in the Cambridge BID scheme, with over 20 events evaluated in order to find the best outreach ambassadors.

The mystery shoppers assessed two activities held by the IfM’s Inkjet Research Centre (IRC) and the i-Teams programme, which uses teams of students to look at real-world applications for new university inventions.

The IRC activity observed was the Kelvin Thunderstorm (or water dropper) electrostatic generator demonstration, which was run by Drs Steve Hoath and Cristina Rodriguez-Rivero. The generator demonstrates how a spark of electricity can be created by arranging two streams of water droplets falling through hollow metal tubes into metal drums.

The activity run by i-Teams was their annual competition ‘What Would You Use THAT For?’ where children aged eight and older explored some world-leading technologies such as a sound recognition devices and penguin monitoring tools and tried to imagine innovative ways in which they would use them.

Steve and Cristina from IRC collected the award on behalf of the IfM.

The next Cambridge Science Festival will be held from 13 to 26 March 2017, with the IfM taking part on Saturday 25. For more information visit www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk

(Image credits: Richard Marsham/RMG Photography)