Winner Reports

Anouk won the Genes Zone last June, here she tells us how she spent her prize money: Hi everybody, I want to repeat a big, massive thank you to all the students, teachers and people involved in the June 2012  ‘I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!’.  The prize money from the Genes Zone went towards teaching children and communities about schistosomiasis (kichocho in swahili) and I am happy to report that the money was extremely useful. Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by the small parasitic worm, Schistosoma. Over 200 million people are infected (90% of which live in sub-Saharan Africa) and over 700 million people are at risk of infection. It is a disease affecting the poorest communities and most neglected, vulnerable people. Babies and children are especially in danger of becoming infected and the damage caused by these schistosome worms can lead to symptoms like blood in … Continue reading →

I took part in June 2012’s Niobium Zone and was lucky enough to be picked out of a great group of scientists! My research is all about getting computers to invent and design video games without any humans getting involved. I said I wanted to spend the money on developing mobile applications that would let more people interact with and play with the results of my research – we’ve just released the first in what I hope will be a series of free mobile apps, all thanks to I’m a Scientist and the students that took part, asked questions and voted! After June, I worked on some brand new features for my research project, ANGELINA, and realised they’d be perfect as a tiny mobile game. So we used our IAS grant to help purchase a development machine to work on – a very shiny Android tablet – found an artist … Continue reading →

Julian won the Argon Zone in March 2011, here’s how he spent his prize money…. I work on malaria, and specifically how the parasites that cause malaria recognise and get inside our red blood cells. Malaria parasites have incredibly complicated life cycles, passing back and forth between humans and mosquitoes, but it is when they infect our red blood cells that they cause all the symptoms of malaria, including death – nearly a million children die from malaria every year. Our idea is that if we understand how they invade our red blood cells, we can come up with vaccines or drugs to try to block invasion, and so prevent malaria infection. The actual process of invasion is fascinating – it is literally one cell forcing it’s way inside another, with the parasite almost dragging the surface of the red blood cell around itself until it winds up inside, where … Continue reading →

Fiona won the Sports Zone back in March 2012. Here’s what she’s been up to with her prize money… I’m so glad I took part in I’m a Scientist in March 2012; it was a lot of fun and really rewarding. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, and also to the other scientists who took part and helped with answering so many awesome questions! When I was 15 years old I remember my biology teacher brought in a pig’s eye. It was disgusting but awesome, and I remember that lesson even 9 years later! My £500 was spent on getting sheep’s heart for a biology lesson at school in Hull and dissection kits for them to cut open the heart and study it. I also spent some on the hiring of a camera and help to film the lesson. The lesson started off with me explaining about the … Continue reading →

Gemma won the Sulfur Zone back in June 2011. Here’s what she’s been up to with her prize money… I loved taking part in I’m a Scientist in June 2011 and want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for me. As promised, I ran off to Green Man music festival in Wales with my prize money and I’m pleased to report I had a great time. Cheers! Of course I was tempted to spend the £500 on designer wellies and a personal Porta-loo, but my conscience got the better of me and I put it towards our science communication stall instead. It’s called the Egg and Sperm Race and it’s the only place in the world EVER that you can race toy trains disguised as sperm around a giant race track disguised as the female reproductive tract. It’s pretty fun and you learn about all the … Continue reading →

Dave won the Marine Zone in March 2011. Here’s how he’s been spending his prize money… I’ve donated £300 of the prize money to TASTE for Science. TASTE is a relatively new science outreach programme that aims to bring practical science to schools in rural Uganda. Most of these schools cannot afford enough equipment for students to be able to get ‘hands on’ with science and perform their own experiments. TASTE aim to address this by operating a mobile laboratory from the back of a van, which can travel around local schools, providing the students with some decent science equipment and demonstrators with experience using it. The first of these vans should be operational in early 2013.son Here’s a page about my donation. You can find out more about the project at: http://tasteforscience.org/ or catch them on Twitter: @TASTEforScience. The remaining money has gone towards web-hosting and development of an … Continue reading →

James won the I’m an Engineer Transport Zone in March 2012. Here’s how he spent his prize money… Despite destroying the first prize cheque I was given (by “testing” whether a cheque can survive a full washing machine cycle). I was extremely happy to win. My goal with the prize money was to try introduce and enthuse more people to Software Engineering. Fortunately at the same time a British charity Raspberry Pi Foundation was planning to release a new ultra cheap computer with their goal that it be used to “promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing”. So I used the prize money to buy some of these Raspberry Pi’s and the kit associated with them and plan to introduce them to pupils at tech fairs and hopefully in the future as part of a … Continue reading →

Jim won the Genes Zone in June 2011. Here’s what he’s been up to with his prize money… I learned of my win whilst I was actually participating in a group chat session with a school, which meant that added to my own excitement was the buzz from the school children who were thrilled to be there for the final results. On the one hand I would have liked to use my prize money to run some practical experiments with two of the schools taking part in the Genes Zone, and on the other I would have liked to set up a webcam in a west African school, so roughly the same time zone, so that they could share a science lesson with a school in the UK. The latter task proved to be more of a logistical issue, and I decided that one way to achieve both aims was … Continue reading →

Chris won the Water Zone in I’m an Engineer back in March. We asked Chris Hill to write a brief report on what he’s done with his prize money. Here’s what he said.. I passed the cheque for £500 to OWL bikes and they were delighted. The work they do there is fantastic and passes on real, hands-on engineering skills to young people who may otherwise be overlooked by society and never given this opportunity. I am a huge supporter of this charity and have given lots of money and volunteer time to it over the years since it started. OWL Bikes provides vocational training for disabled and disadvantaged people by recycling and refurbishing unwanted bikes to sell to the public at reasonable prices. I met the three young people in the photos and their dexterity and hand-eye co-ordination has improved massively over the few weeks they have been involved … Continue reading →

Jack won the Energy Zone in March 2012. Here’s what he’s been up to with his prize money… I work at the York Plasma Institute, a new research centre at the University of York set up to study all different kinds of plasma. Plasma is the 4th state of matter – if you keep heating a gas up, eventually the electrons ‘boil off’ their atoms and you get an electrically charged gas, called a plasma. Examples in nature include the Northern lights (the Aurora), lightening and the Sun (all stars are huge balls of plasma – in fact 99% of the universe is thought to be plasma). Man-made plasmas are used in things like lighting, making computer chips, cleaning medical instruments and in experiments to try and provide clean Fusion Energy as a power supply for the world. Fusion is the way the sun makes its energy and if we … Continue reading →

Jamie won the Forensics Zone in March 2011. Here’s what he’s been up to with his prize money… In March 2011 I was lucky enough to win the Forensics Zone with Mark Hill, a fatal accident Police investigator. Mark is a good guy, interesting and interested in all things forensics. He is a useful athlete too like me, despite his brush with a high voltage cable (which is another story); we’ve met up and done a few runs since together! It was a great experience, talking and emailing directly to so many young minds as well as my fellow ‘experts’, I learnt a lot from Kat Davies, a forensic bug person! My abiding memory of that time was of a mad three weeks, manically typing in the ‘live chats’ and spending long evenings replying to text questions but great fun! I promised to use the £500 winnings to create a … Continue reading →