Murder Mystery Event

This popular event, aimed at families and young people, is staged during National Science & Engineering week.  Following a scene-setting presentation in the Nuffield Theatre, participating guests are invited to help solve a murder mystery, as they progress around different parts of the campus to use different aspects of technology, scientific techniques etc to piece together clues.  In 2009 this activity contributed to the University receiving a national award for the best Science & Engineering Day.

In 2009 and 2010 funding for this event was provided from our Skills Enhancement Fund, as an outreach training activity for research students and postdocs. 

Research students and members of postdoctoral staff are invited to participate by setting up scientific puzzles for guests to solve.  The tools you build to help with the solutions should incorporate and demonstrate aspects of the Faculty's research work.  Funding is provided to support development of your puzzle, and this is a fabulous activity to put down on your CV.

Examples of puzzles might be:

  • fingerprinting - visitors have to match fingerprints with those of the suspects
  • solving a mathematical puzzle to generate a clue

If you are interested in contributing next time, please watch this page for further information.

For more information generally about the Murder Mystery please contact the event coordinator Reena Pau rp05r@ecs.soton.ac.uk.