Ana-Mah Din: Seren Techniquest

Cafodd Swyddog Gwaith Allanol Techniquest Ana-Mah Din ei rhestru’n fer am wobr Rising Star y Wales STEM Awards.

Cafodd hi ei chydnabod am ei gwaith yn darparu gweithdai STEAM [gwyddoniaeth, technoleg, peirianneg, celf, mathemateg] yn y gymuned leol a thraddodi’r profiad Techniquest i rheini sydd ddim yn gallu gwneud y daith i Fae Caerdydd yn hawdd.

Siaradon ni i Ana-Mah am ei amser yn y rôl hyd yn hyn, a beth mae’n meddwl i gael ei enwi ar y rhestr fer am y wobr.

Do you remember your first day at Techniquest? What was it like?
I’ve been at Techniquest for two years now. A lot of the exhibits that I remember seeing when I was younger had come back into my memory; I kept thinking “I remember this one, I remember that one from my childhood”, so that feeling of nostalgia was quite nice.

Coming into the office, I had a tour from Andrea [Meyrick, Head of Education] and I got shown the behind-the-scenes of the building, and I was thinking, “this building’s huge!”. That’s the main thing I remember enjoying, that big tour, and looking at all the different exhibits and areas of Techniquest that I remembered.

What does your day-to-day job look like?
I’ve got a unique role in that no day is quite the same. I don’t have any regularity, but I enjoy that. Some days I’ll have to wake up really early to get to an outreach session — normally I do outreach far away from Techniquest, with the point being to reach out to communities that can’t readily make a trip to the centre.

Most days I’m delivering two outreach sessions per day, which means I’ll finish my working day at around 6pm. It tends to be one school in the morning and then it’s community work in the evening when the schools are closed — places like after school clubs from 3–6pm.

Some days are long, but I love that; I enjoy being busy. You do have quieter days where I’ll be doing some reporting, budgeting, developing workshops or some other admin work.

What’s your favourite part of your role?
It’s really hard to pick a favourite part, because I love my job so much — virtually every single part of it.

It’s the first time where I’ve gone into anything and I’ve never felt bored or felt that I don’t want to do this. Even the more ‘boring’ parts of the role like evaluating sessions still help me learn something.

If I was to choose one thing though, I think it would just be going on outreach, specifically to communities or areas that are new to me. For example, one of the first areas I went to was Merthyr — I’d never been to Merthyr before, but it opened my eyes to different communities in south Wales, and to some extent how privileged I was as a child. Getting the opportunity to make even a small difference to those communities — I love that.

I don’t really consider my job to be a job in the traditional sense; I consider it more of a passion. It sounds cliché, but it genuinely is something that I love to do.

Can you talk a little bit about your journey before joining Techniquest?
I was born in a little valley in Germany, and I moved here in 2013 when I was 11 years old. The main reason I moved here was because there’s a lot more diversity. Where I used to live, there wasn’t a lot of that. We moved here because we had some family and friends in Wales, and my dad also used to work here in Cardiff, so we knew it was a good place to celebrate diversity and to be yourself.

I joined Cardiff High School, where I did all my school years, then went to Cardiff University. Self-admittedly, I was a geek in high school — a bit of a ‘teacher’s pet’.

I chose to study pharmacy in university, but because it was such a jump from sixth form to higher education and I had no idea what I was expecting as the first child in the family to attend university, I failed my first year.

When I received those results, I felt ashamed, I felt like I couldn’t do it, and I knew that my parents were expecting a lot from me as the eldest — I didn’t know what to do.

These days, though, I talk about it quite openly, because now I understand that university isn’t for everyone, but also, if I hadn’t failed, I would never have come to Techniquest to do what I do today. I now look at it as one of the best things that could have happened to me, to be honest. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to take a year off from my studies, get involved in the local community, and I wouldn’t have been able to get this role.

How does it feel to be shortlisted for Wales STEM Awards’ Rising Star award?
Initially, I was taken by surprise because I didn’t know I was being nominated. Now, I feel really excited and really humbled by the nomination Andrea put in. STEAM [science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics] has always been something that I’m quite passionate about; not just in school or work, but also at home.

To have two years’ worth of work and efforts recognised is really nice, and it encourages me to continue doing more, and to continue enthusing children with STEAM — it’s a great feeling.

Can you talk about some of the specific projects you’ve worked on that you’re most proud of?
One of the main projects is the CREST award. The one that we do at Techniquest is called CREST Superstar, which is aimed at 7–11 year-olds. It’s a nationally recognised award, which means the children who complete the workshop get an accredited certificate at the end. It’s nice for the children, who can proudly say they completed a STEM workshop

I led my first CREST workshop in December 2023, and one thing that made Techniquest stand out was delivering it at Christmas time. Not everybody celebrates Christmas, so there are children out there that have nothing to do over the Christmas period. As a Muslim myself, I was proud to do the workshop with a girls-only Muslim group at a local mosque.

It was something that Techniquest had never done before, and you don’t see many organisations doing it. It was nice to come in with an idea and have Techniquest encourage me to go through with it.

What do you hope to achieve going forward at Techniquest?
I’d like to continue building the long-lasting relationships we have in the community — not just creating new community connections but strengthening the connections we already have.

I want to push myself but also push our outreach as far as I can and make STEAM as accessible to everyone I possibly can.

One of the main things in my head now is to work with young people — above the ages of 11 — and try to enthuse high school students with STEAM in an exciting way.

Mae’r seremoni yn cymryd lle ar 16 Hydref, ac rydyn ni eisiau rhoi llongyfarch i’r terfynwr eraill ar y waith arbennig maen nhw wedi’u gwneud.

Rydyn ni hefyd ar y rhestr fer am y wobr STEM Educational Programme of the Year (Not-For-Profit). Gallwch chi weld y rhestr fer am bob wobr yn y Wales STEM Awards 2025.

Darllenwch fwy am y prosiectau mae Ana-Mah yn weithio arno trwy ein tudalen ymgysylltu â’r gymuned.