Chemical Research Odyssey: From High School Foundations to University Frontiers

Practicing research in high school is fundamental to training future university students, developing critical thinking skills, and understanding societal issues in a broader context. However, such training is rarely incorporated into upper secondary education. For the past 10 years, we have developed a research programme tailored for high school students, enabling them to build colorimetric sensors for analytes of societal importance using the simple strategy of indicator displacement assay (IDA). Our work has not only been published, including in international journals, but has also garnered awards and recognition at the fall meeting of the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS), benefiting both our students and among our students and the broader scientific community. We have presented our research findings annually at the SCS. Furthermore, we have extended our concept to universities, using the knowledge gained at high school level to initiate a PhD thesis with a student in the field of sensing. This demonstrates that, on a larger scale, this visionary program should be further developed in high schools and supported by institutions to promote excellence in science and chemistry. We therefore hope that this article will resonate with the scientific community.