The Langton Star Centre develops projects where students can work alongside scientists and engineers, making a real contribution to new scientific research. They gain an authentic experience of science and in our experience this encourages them to continue with A levels in the sciences and to pursue STEM courses in Higher Education.  For example we have 180 students taking A level physics and similar numbers in Biology and Chemistry with 56% of our students following STEM courses at University. These are some of the research projects the students are involved with.

• The Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector (LUCID). This is a project to put a new style cosmic ray detector into space in 2012. We are using detector technology from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and working with Surrey Satellite Technology Limited and Professor Larry Pinsky on the detector design.  Alongside this project we are developing a global school based project to detect cosmic rays called CERN@school.

• We are working with the Head of Plasma Physics at Imperial College, Professor Steve Rose.  He has set our students a number of demanding problems - the latest on equilibration times for plasma.  The last problem was solved by one of our students who has now published a paper on the geometry of plasma in stars .

• We use the Faulkes telescopes to involve our students throughout the school in live observing, the search for Near Earth Objects and observations on Exoplanets.

• The Myelin Basic Protein (MBP) project examines the symptoms, causes and possible treatments for multiple sclerosis. The Star Centre has the first ever Genetic Modification Committee Licence granted to a school for students to carry out genuine genetics research into how the process of phosphorylation affects MBP. The students' findings could shed light on how the insulating myelin sheath around nerves is attacked and destroyed by the immune system in multiple sclerosis patients.>/p>