Sofia won the Ecology Zone in November 2013. We asked her to tell us how she had been using her £500 prize and here is what she said…
Being part of I’m a Scientist was both scary and a huge adventure! It seems like yesterday that questions were being fired up at the speed of light and my fingers could barely keep up with the tired keyboard and the flashing lines of the chat-room screen! I got everything from the most mind-boggling question to “do you like sloths?”, and really cracked my brain to get around the “how would you solve world hunger?”. But winning was just the beginning and the rush has continued when it came to putting the prize money to good use.
The first idea was to use some of the money to visits a few schools and organize a “Marine Science Exploration Day!” to celebrate it all! This soon proved a challenge to organize within a short time frame! After much debate, date re-arranging and multiple requests, I have decided to keep it as an ongoing project outside the I’m a Scientist scope, but keeping its science sharing philosophy, and I have now planned visit to schools both in Portugal and the UK!
Me at the Meet the Scientists event full of posters, microscopes and other activities that helped people understand marine biology
One of the things the prize money recently came in hand for (and this took me quite a long time to decide) was to assemble a “Marine Science Discovery Kit” that I can use for these visits, so that the I’m a Scientist legacy will live on. I decided get a range of educational materials to showcase Marine Science from one end to the other (e.g. animal models, underwater microscope, identification guides for field days), covering the basics from the understanding of our marine microscopic world to the identification of species on the beach, while showcasing a variety of groups, from seaweed, to crustaceans, cetaceans and much more! After this, all I had left to do was to get creative!
In the meantime, I took part in the “Meet the Scientist!” event, in a chance for scientists to showcase their science to the wider public (and on what I thought was a great idea to start piloting my ideas for marine science days!). It was a blast (take a look at the pictures)! I used another part of the prize money to do a stand called “It’s a barnacle world!” where, besides the massive A0 posters on everything you always wanted to know about barnacles, I had microscopes mounted with baby barnacles and micro seaweed and loads of hands-on activities!
A flask of micro-seaweed for people to examine under the microscope!
You could get in the blind box (if you were brave enough!) to discover the fake barnacle and make your own barnacles (with as many cool adaptations as you could think of!) and take them home with you! We had a few hundred people coming by and it was a challenge to keep up!
But this was just the beginning and in the following months I have managed to participate in the Green Fest, SplashDown! Summer School, Marine Science Career Fair, help out in the Young Researchers scheme and am about to become a STEM Ambassador! Also, some of the school visits are coming up and I cannot wait to put my Marine Science kit to good use again!
My latest project using the prize money is the creation of a website with all the nitty-gritty bits of being a marine scientist and some teaching resources and do-at-home activities to divulge the fascinating facts about our oceans! You will be able to contact me directly, about everything related to marine-science and being a biologist, and we can keep the scientist-public door open (so look for updates to this post soon!).
This has been quite a journey since the epic weeks of I’m a Scientist and, thanks to its funding that helped to “plant all the little seeds” for the new projects, it has been an ongoing quest for science. I am quite excited about what the future holds and wish all of you prospective scientists the best of luck. May science be with you and remember to enjoy the journey!
