Category Archives: Winner Reports

Lyn was voted the winner of the Disease Zone in March 2019. She writes about the process of using her £500 prize money to try to create a video game 

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

For as long as I can remember, I have been frustrated that learning science still largely involves memorising dry words and static pictures. My dearest wish, as a student, was for there to be a fun, interactive way for me to assign meaning to the jargon, and see how individual concepts related to one another. So I didn’t hesitate to propose writing a science education computer game when I participated in I’m a Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here!

The game would be called Cellverse – the player would explore a vast abandoned laboratory complex, picking up crates containing various biological components, and then using mysterious research equipment to piece them together and discover their functions. Using simple game mechanics and mini-puzzles, I would convey first the field of science I am personally involved in – immunology – and then expand into other areas of biology.

It was always going to be an uphill task – I knew next to nothing about programming when I started the project, but I was excited to learn a new skill and use it to teach what I knew at the same time. I spent many hours debugging every keystroke, generating each floor map, making sure my little character didn’t run straight through walls.

Alas, through a period of upheaval from finishing my PhD to moving across the world for a new job, I lost track of the progress of the project. Over time, I’ve learned that the need for interactive modes of learning is never outgrown, even at the very highest levels of science! I also realised that learning to programme is like unlocking a fresh angle in your brain, a new curiosity and understanding of the invisible things happening behind the scenes – which is an extremely useful perspective to have while studying the ways of the world. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to come back to this project wiser and better-equipped – fingers crossed!

In total, I spent £85 on a Wacom drawing tablet, £20 on programming software, £60 on an external hard drive and £30 on books on digital art and programming. I will be donating the rest of the prize money, approximately £300, to Code Club, as it relates closely to what I was trying to achieve (and will hopefully enable students to write their own video games!)

Daniel was voted the winner of the Healthy Cities Zone in June 2018. Here he writes about how he used his £500 prize money to teach school students and members of the public about pollution.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

Following my experience with I’m A Scientist I was keen to do something with the prize money that would directly engage with school children to raise awareness of air pollution and the risks of exposure with an experience in which they could truly visualise it.

One of the questions that I got asked a lot in the healthy cities zone was where the most polluted place in the world was, so it seemed appropriate that I spent my prize money supporting the Michael Pinsky pollution pod installation at MediaCityUK in Manchester as part of Clean Air Week in June 2019. 

Brought to Manchester by Cape Farewell in partnership with Transport for Greater Manchester, the Pollution Pods were made available to school groups and the public throughout Clean Air Week. The artwork installation used harmless, specially created atmospheres in five interconnected geodesic domes to simulate dangerously polluted air quality in cities around the world. 

The unique, interactive experience takes you on a fascinating journey through the pollution and air quality of cities across the world. A series of climatically controlled pods compare five contrasting global environments where the air quality, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide levels of five cities is recreated. Starting with the truly clean air of Tautra in Norway, continuing through the astonishing smog and pollution of London, New Delhi, Beijing and Sao Paolo. 

The event had 185 students (Y4-6) from 6 schools attend on the 21st June who were given the opportunity to experience the air quality in different city pods as well as take part in several educational activities that revolved around air pollution and lung function. 

In total, £164 was spent on travel and accommodation expenses for volunteering at Clean Air Week in Manchester with £236 being spent on materials for the interactive experiments.

Following the 2018 competition I signed up as a STEM ambassador and have been looking for further opportunities to assist schools with their science projects. 

Oli was voted the winner of the Neptunium Zone in November 2017. Here he writes about how he used his £500 prize money to create a set of 3D printed pollen grain models to allow people a close-up look at pollen without a microscope.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

Before I started my PhD I was a science teacher. After school finished one day, I sat in my lab and thought about the research I knew I would be starting soon. If I were to come back to my school as a full-on scientist, could I make my work seem interesting to my old students? My science is all about uncovering the past and future of one of Brazil’s coolest forests, and a big part of it involves using fossil pollen as microscopic time machines. Pollen’s amazing stuff, it’s beautiful and unbelievably tough, but it’s hard to enjoy without decent microscopes – something that can be tricky to get in schools.

Then I had a brainwave – could you 3D-print pollen grains? If you could make them larger than life they’d be easier to enjoy and you could do loads of cool stuff with them. A quick google showed that you could, and Kat Holt (a pollen scientist in New Zealand) had done exactly that – hooray! Now I just needed the opportunity…

Fast forward a year or so, and I was taking part in I’m A Scientist’s Neptunium zone. I decided that if I won I’d use the prize money to try and make some 3D pollen – and, after two incredibly fun and busy weeks, I had to start trying to make that a reality. It took a long time and a lot of failing and learning, but with help from a number of different people (including some booster money from the University of Reading) the 3D Pollen Project was born!

I’ve now scanned pollen from 30 different types of plants and made 3D models of most of them – I used the £500 from I’m A Scientist to print my own multicoloured set, which is 2,500x larger than life. They’ve been incredibly useful! I’ve taken them into a primary school to talk about pollination, we used them in a British Science Week event to help explain why plants are smelly, a colleague took them to the pub for a talk about her research on past environments (she said they were the best engagement tool she’d ever had!), and in September I get to show them off to thousands of members of the public at the Berkshire show, where I’ve got a stand in the University’s tent.

But what’s most exciting is how lots of other pollen scientists have got involved. Researchers in Hull, Manchester, Reading, Exeter, Oxford, London, Chicago (USA), Goettingen (Germany) and Bergen (Norway) have sent me more than 200 samples of pollen from all over the world (including Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Tanzania, Mongolia, Turkey and much of Europe). The files online have been downloaded almost 1,000 times and the project website has been visited by people from 51 countries. The models have been used by artists, teachers and scientists all over the world for all sorts of reasons – it’s been amazing to watch the project grow, and I’m so excited about what the future holds for it. But none of it would have been possible without I’m A Scientist, the Wellcome Trust (who funded the Neptunium zone), and all the students who voted for me to win the money. Thank you all so much!

You can follow the 3D Pollen Project on Twitter (@3dpollenproject), see the models on Sketchfab, download scans and printable files from MorphoSource, and find more information on the project website (3dpollenproject.wixsite.com/main).

Kelly was voted the winner of the Fermium Zone in November 2018. Here she writes about how she used her £500 prize money to introduce GCSE students to the benefits of animals to mental health, as well as how to conduct qualitative psychology research.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

The event was one I initially planned way back before taking part in I’m A Scientist, and was an interactive workshop/engagement session with 54 Year 10 pupils about the importance of animals for mental health and wellbeing. We had three rooms which pupils rotated around in which they met a group of therapy animals from a charity (rabbits, guinea pigs, a skinny pig and an amazing dog called Tyler) and heard about the work the charity does.

A second room was where pupils had a session with a ‘Dogter’ – Billy is a therapy dog who regularly works with medical students to learn communication skills and have some relaxation time when the medicine course is stressful. In the third room the pupils engaged in some qualitative research practice to understand how our research was conducted. They practised some qualitative interviewing skills and learned how to map their social networks.

In total, £290 was spent on the animal visitors’ fees, parking and travel, £180 on pupil travel, £20 on supplies (pens, markers, flip charts, post-it notes etc), and £20 travel expenses incurred whilst arranging the event.

Suzi Gage won the Brain Zone in June 2011, when she was a PhD student at the University of Bristol. Suzi wanted to put her prize money towards starting a podcast that explained the science of substance use. “Hopefully, it will help teenagers to understand the effects of recreational drugs, and tease out the truth about the risks from the confusing message sometimes presented in the media.”

“I think it would be good for kids to be able to find out about drugs from the scientists who are researching them,” said Suzi on her profile in 2011. “What do you think of this idea? I’d love to hear your ideas too, this is just to get the ball rolling!”

After winning, Suzi did use the £500 to start her podcast, Say Why to Drugs. “I bought a microphone and some train tickets to travel the country interviewing addiction and recreational drugs researchers. In these interviews, we talk about what is currently known about the effects of various recreational drugs.”

Listen and subscribe to the podcast

“I’m a Scientist really inspired me to get involved with more public outreach!” says Suzi. “It was the catalyst to me starting a blog and applying for a BSA Media Fellowship.”

Suzi was awarded the Media Fellowship with BBC Science in 2013, and her podcast has grown to over 1 million listeners. In 2016, she won the AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science for her podcast. “I doubt any of these things would have happened without I’m a Scientist,” she says.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

Sam was voted the winner of the Sustaining Health Zone in March 2015. Here he writes about how the two organisations he decided to donate his £500 prize money to will benefit from it.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

I was lucky enough to win the Sustaining Health Zone in March 2015. Fortunately, the research institute where I work already has an excellent range of outreach opportunities, which I continue to enjoy participating in (when I can find time to escape the lab!). Therefore, I decided to use the money to support a pair of organisations helping students in less fortunate areas of the world.

The first of these is a charity called The Wulugu Project. They do amazing work in the poorest regions of Ghana in Africa, providing the chance for a real education to girls who would otherwise have no access to teaching. Since 1993, the charity has built or renovated over 40 schools! They also provide endless other support; everything from library books and computers, loans to support mothers sending their children to school, to footballs for PE lessons.

The Wulugu Project was founded by a retired teacher from my home county of Norfolk, so I am very happy to help a group with local links. So far the charity has improved the education of 250,000 girls in Ghana, and hopefully will help many more in the years to come.

Read International Library

The other organisation I am donating some of the prize money to is Read International. I am myself a huge fan of reading, but many children in developing counties have very little access to books. Read International is a charity from the UK, and they work hard to provide reading resources to students of all ages in the African country Tanzania. So far, they have created over 75 school libraries and donated around 1.5 million books!

While it is easy to feel like you’d rather be anywhere else but school some days, education is one of the most powerful tools for improving the world for future generations. I am extremely glad that my prize money has gone to such a good cause. Many thanks go to the I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here team for the opportunity, and of course to all the students who get so involved in the competitions!

Ross was voted the winner of the Tungsten Zone in November 2015. Here he writes about using his £500 prize money on running an interactive exhibit about the cardiovascular system.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

I ran an interactive exhibit showcasing how the cardiovascular system can rapidly and unconsciously change in response to the world going on around us. This showed the subtle and unique relationship the brain has with the rest of the body, demonstrating that our hearts and blood vessels quickly adapt not only in the face of exercise and physical stress, but to our emotions and thought processes too. Volunteers were attached to a monitoring device and were given a series of challenges, whilst they watched their cardiovascular systems change in real time before their own eyes.

The exhibit was very successful, received excellent feedback (people loved taking a peek inside themselves!), and I plan to roll it out further in future. The participants were particularly amazed at how quickly their bodies could change in the face of seemingly small challenges, and appreciated just how important the link between mind and body was in keeping us going 24/7!

£250 was spent on a projector, and £100 on travel. We have reached around 100 people so far. With the equipment purchased with the prize fund, I would like to take the exhibit to new locations, both locally and nationally (with a view to taking to a national science festival). Thus, the remaining funds I plan to use for travel.

Samuel was voted the winner of the Heart Zone in June 2018. Here he writes about how he used his £500 prize money to engage with students in bilingual schools, and also develop an exhibit for the Exhibition Road Festival in London.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

A year ago, I was lucky enough to be voted the winner of the Heart Zone by school children who participated to the sessions. I won £500 I had to spend on STEM outreach activities and report below on the activities they have helped funding.

I have been a Project Manager for Native Scientist for a year and a half now, and a participant of their workshops for more than 5 years. Native Scientist sends scientists to bilingual schools attended by migrant children to promote STEM subjects and empowerment through science. The workshops last about 1 hours and a half and are run on a speed-dating format where scientists spend about 15 minutes with a group of children before rotating to another group. Half of the money from the I’m A Scientist prize entirely funded 4 workshops in May 2019 that took place in a French school located in London. In total, 102 children aged between 7 and 10 years old have been exposed to a wide range of topics from cancerous cells to brain diseases to artificial intelligence and 84 reported having learnt “a lot”.

I also led my Department stall at the Exhibition Road Festival in late June 2019. Over a week-end, a team of 14 scientists from King’s College London and Imperial College London Centre for Doctoral Training in Smart Medical Imaging interacted with about 700 people in the Body and Mind zone. The stand was titled “Peeking inside the human body” and aimed to show that medical imaging could now do more than “just” image the body. Our activities indeed highlighted how it also be used to generate virtual environments where surgeons can plan and rehearse surgeries or create 3D print models of the organs of interest for teaching purposes.

The Native Scientist workshops cost a total of £240 (4x£60) and I spent the remaining £260 on building a fluorescent setup to explain how radioactivity can be used in medical imaging to both cure and monitor treatment at the same time (theranostic). In a frame, we represented the human body with its main arteries (represented by pipes) in which radioactive particles flow until they bind to tumours (lead beads being attracted to a magnet in the setup). The beads can hardly be seen until we light up the frame just like PET-CT scanners can help localizing the tumours. The activity was a success and helped changing the audience perception on radioactivity in healthcare.

I would like once more to thank the I’m A Scientist team and encourage any person (scientist/teacher/pupil/etc) interested to participate.

Matt was voted the winner of the Actinium Zone in June 2017. Here he writes about how he used his £500 prize money to produce a sci-art exhibition.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

My favourite thing about science is the creativity behind it. I try to explore this creativity in all of the public engagement and outreach work I do when talking about science. I used the £500 to put on an exhibition of science art in Bristol for 2 weeks in May 2018, Creative Reactions Bristol. We had 35 scientists and 35 artists work together to produce pieces of art that explored the scientists’ research. We had over 2,000 people explore the exhibition and talk to scientists and artists involved.

I am continuing with the science art exhibition and in 2019 we have 50 artists and 50 scientists taking part with an exhibition across two galleries for 30 days. We’ve got a load of school and adult workshops planned to get people involved in science in hands-on and creative ways, instead of just teaching people about science we are getting them to explore and be creative.

Without the I’m a Scientist funding I would not have been able to deliver as successful an exhibition in 2018 as we did. This success has enabled us to continue with the project, growing it and making it more engaging for all ages.

As well as organising the 2019 science art exhibition, I’m also developing a wheel of fortune that explores the concepts of risk so we can finally understand what it actually means when the media tells us that coffee/chocolate/milk/bacon/[insert food here] is killing us!

Liam was voted the winner of the Sustainability Zone in November 2018. Here he writes about how he used his £500 prize money to develop a session for children and students to learn about climate change using VR headsets.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

I used the prize money to purchase virtual reality headsets to develop an outreach session with the University of Leeds. Whenever I taught the science or solutions of climate change, I was frequently told by children that they couldn’t visualise environments that are on the other side of the world, let alone how they are changing. So, I bought an array of Oculus headsets so that children can immerse themselves in coral reefs, stand on top of glaciers, or shake hands with great primates in the rainforests.

I have now developed a session – ‘The Reality of Climate Change’ – that will be taken on tour to classrooms, museums, and science events. Students will first visit environments in their natural, pristine state, before looking at the impacts that climate change is having on these ecosystems. Children so far have responded very positively, displaying a greater sense of empathy towards environmental change, and desire for climate action.

The I’m a Scientist experience taught me to be a better science communicator – and not just with children, but senior academics too. I was also so inspired by the curiosity and intelligence of everybody who asked a question. In my own work now, I try to ask as many questions as possible and explain things in the simplest ways.

Next up for the virtual reality session is to roll it out to as many children as possible! I’m still testing lots of ideas with different age groups to ensure the content is effective and relatable. Eventually, this will form part of the University of Leeds outreach programme, which reaches children from all backgrounds across West Yorkshire.

Stephanie was voted the winner of the Climate Zone in March 2018. Here she writes about how she has used her £500 prize money to buy filming equipment and software to start up a science YouTube channel.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

I have started a YouTube channel called Science with Steph. I have been a consumer of online video for a long time and know a few small creators, and so I decided to take the plunge and start a channel myself! It has been hard work (growing a channel from scratch these days can be very slow going), but very enjoyable. I have learnt many skills such as producing, editing and filming videos. I have also learned how to talk about quite tricky subjects in a simple way.

YouTube is a great platform as it’s the world’s second biggest search engine. Having said that it can be quite hard to have your voice heard (there are 500 hours of content uploaded every minute on YouTube). I hope my small channel will improve the platform as a place of learning and where people can improve their scientific understanding.

I spent £180 on a second hand camera, £250 on a microphone, and £70 on accessories like a tripod, lapel mics, and editing software. I have been making videos every week (with a break of 2 months when I moved house) and so far I have over 4500 views, 200 subscribers and nearly 150 hours of watch time on my channel! I hope to use my connections in the Stem Ambassadors network and also other educational content creators to grow my channel and increase the impact I have.

Sophie was voted the winner of the Americium Zone in March 2018. Here she writes about how her £500 prize money is being used to make materials such as 3D fossils to teach children about palaeontology.

If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply

I decided to donate the money to the Scarborough Museums Trust, specifically to the Rotunda Museum who run both free and paid science workshops for primary and secondary school children. I wanted to donate to the museum because they are a small establishment who do not receive the same sort of funding as some of the larger museums. Furthermore, it is also the local museum in the town in which I grew up, so I thought it would be nice to give something back to the school communities in that area.

The money donated went towards funding 3D-printed fossils for them to use in their science (palaeontology) workshops so that some of the rarer and more valuable fossils that the children might not otherwise be allowed to handle could be used risk-free. Some examples of the fossils that have been 3-D printed include walrus and crocodile skulls. The project is only in the very beginning stages, but some of the fossils have been 3D-printed and more will be constructed over the next few months and years. Some scans of some of the museum’s most popular objects can be seen here: https://sketchfab.com/jim.middleton.

The I’m a Scientist experience was really fun. I learnt quite a lot about, not only my own knowledge, but that of the children over the two weeks. I learnt that they are really interested in black holes and climate change! Many of the children had really interesting and quite thought-provoking questions, some of which I did not know the answer to!

The prize money will help to fund the use of the 3D fossils in the workshop which I hope will continue to inspire future generations of children to get into the study of Earth Science, and keep them thinking about how the world around us is constantly changing in response to changing climates and environments.

Since the I’m a Scientist experience, I have given a talk in a sixth form in Yorkshire about my own research in Australia looking at the effect of Greenland ice melt on sea level in the 19th and 20th century and am hoping to get involved with soapbox science in June.