Outreach activities can directly influence educational development and career trajectory; while also promoting the institutions that produce them. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is fundamental to development, pushing forward technological advancements and laying the path to new frontiers. This paper aims to provide an overview of an outreach event with a framework that can be developed into a novel teaching tool, showcasing collaboration across multiple STEM subjects: Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Engineering.From Mars to Humans is an interactive educational outreach project, developing the fundamentals needed to understand Raman spectroscopy and its many applications on earth and beyond. This interdisciplinary demonstration includes several devices and models developed by the Biophotonics and Imaging research group at the University of Southampton. We will cover the design and function of "Dr Raman" and the "Raman for Life Rover (R4L)", two interactive activity devices that have been developed using state-of-the-art spectroscopy technology. These devices help translate the understanding of light-matter interactions to real-life applications, focusing on current popular media topics, public health and interplanetary discovery. Additionally, we demonstrate how these devices within the outreach event can inspire a new generation of scientists, utilising how the underpinning science is leading new transformative technologies and advancing human endeavour. From Mars to Humans activity was deployed for the Southampton Science and Engineering Festival (SOTSEF 2022) and received excellent feedback from visitors. We will present the public engagement framework that led to this achievement, analyse the feedback and engagement criteria of the activity, and summarise goals for the future.

Multiphoton microscopies are an invaluable tool in biomedical imaging given their inherent capabilities for label free imaging, optical sectioning, chemical and structural specificity. They comprise various types of Coherent Raman microscopies (CR), such as Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (CARS), Stimulated Raman Loss (SRL) or Stimulated Raman Gain, different kinds of Harmonic Generation imaging (HG) such as Second and Third Harmonic Generation (SHG and THG respectively), and Multiphoton Autofluorescence imaging (MA) such as Two and Three Photon Excited Autofluorescence (TPEAF and ThPEAF respectively). Despite their significant advantages, multiphoton microscopies, comparably to all other types of optical microscopies, exhibit limited penetration depth in tissue due to absorption and scattering.In this work we explore the advantages of multiphoton microscopies in hard and soft deep tissue imaging when using excitation wavelengths in the range of Short-Wavelength Infrared (SWIR) windows which occur between 1000 nm and 2500 nm. These spectral windows have notable merits including longer attenuation lengths and none or very low signal absorption observed for almost all kinds of multiphoton microscopy. We show results of using excitations in the SWIR windows, generated by standard as well as novel sources, such as a thulium fibre laser, in different types of multiphoton microscopy on a variety of hard and soft tissue samples (bone, cartilage and other tissue types) and demonstrate the advantages of using excitations in this wavelength range, including longer penetration depth and high resolution for deep tissue imaging.