Ceri won the Evolution Zone in June 2010, here’s how she spent her winnings:

I had great fun taking part in I’m a Scientist back in 2010 and I can still remember some of the questions I was asked.  My favourite was whether the characters in Twilight could actually exist from an evolutionary perspective.  I didn’t think I was going to have to declare my allegiance to Team Edward or Team Jacob during my web chats!

I was thrilled to be voted the winner and want to say thank you again, not only to everyone who voted for me, but to everyone who thought of probing questions too.

I have done (and am still doing) a number of things with my £500 prize money.  When I finished my Ph.D. I was wondering for a long time on how best to use the money and how to get the most good out of it.

The Bristol Dinosaur Project helps to teach people about Bristol’s very own dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus

I decided to donate half of it to the Bristol Dinosaur Project, which is a great scheme run by Bristol University to educate people of all ages all about Bristol’s very own dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus. As a palaeontology student I was passionate about communicating the wonders of extinct life to anyone who would listen and I think the Bristol Dinosaur Project does a fantastic job of bringing ‘Theco’ back from the murky depths of the past.

I used some of the remaining money to take my ‘I’m a Scientist’ act on the road to talk to the Year 9 pupils at Kingsmead School in Somerset about my Ph.D. research.  The pupils took part in the Evolution Zone web chats so it was a fantastic opportunity to meet my inquisitors. We had a whole lot of fun identifying different fossils and thinking about the environments in which they once lived. The pupils also had a fascination with mass extinctions, which was seriously cool if a little disconcerting.

I have about £200 left and I want to make this really count.  Since graduating from my Ph.D. I have become a STEM Ambassador so that I can keep going around to schools to talk about science.  I would really, really like to set up a scheme where scientists can be placed with schools to answer questions about what it’s like to have a career as a scientist or what it’s really like to be a researcher. I remember feeling absolutely baffled about what jobs scientists actually did when I was a teenager and I wanted to know what I was getting in to! This idea is still brewing away, but I hope to get something off the ground in the near future and the ‘I’m a Scientist’ prize money will go a long way to helping my fuzzy idea become a brilliant reality. So thank you again and watch this space!