Winner Reports

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 →

Martin won the Quantum Zone in March 2012. It looks like he’s been very busy, here’s his report on what he’s been up to with his prize money… I rashly promised to use the £500 winnings to run a science songwriting competition for young people. As soon as I won the rush of excitement gave way to the realisation that I had no idea how I was going to do it. Luckily, GeekPop creator Hayley Birch did know what to do and and even gave us the first prize: tickets for the winners and a chum/guardian to attend Einstein’s Garden at the Green Man festival and help me run a science songwriting workshop. House of Strange Studios volunteered a day of studio time for the winners too. What prizes! Next we needed judges. And what judges! Just by asking very nicely, lots of very brilliant and lovely people agreed to … Continue reading →

Wei Xun won the Manganese Zone back in June 2011. We asked her to write a report on what she’s done with her £500 prize money, here’s what she’s been up to… In our research group, there is a project that investigates the link between how much salt from the sea has infiltrated the drinking waters, and the health of pregnant women living on the coasts in the district of Dacope, situated in south-western Bangladesh. From the onset, we wanted to use the prize money to address the fact that very few people are aware that this is a problem. Our original plan was to organise a workshop at the study site for local women to teach them how to recognize and stop drinking salty water, and to get medical help before it is too late. Since the majority of the women cannot read or write, we needed to use … Continue reading →

Cat won the Microbiology Zone in June 2011. We asked Cat to write a short report on what she’s been doing with her prize money. Here’s what she said: When I got told that I had been chosen as one of the Scientists in the Microbiology Zone, I knew exactly where the prize money would go if I won. As a STEM Ambassador I’ve been really lucky to have the opportunity to pass on my love for science to kids in Glasgow, but now I knew I wanted to spread the love further! This time all the way to a little village called Boma nGombe in Tanzania While £500 is not a lot of money, I knew that it could have a huge impact on the kids living at the Tír Na N’Óg orphanage. These kids have had a really hard start to life, but the people who run the … Continue reading →

Peta won the Zinc Zone back in November 2011, here’s what she’s been doing with her prize money… Since winning I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here I have been truly inspired by the highly imaginative questions asked by the students and I wanted to use the prize money to produce some demos of fun science experiments that they could do at home themselves to keep the science fun happening outside the classroom. Measuring the speed of light with chocolate This was discussed by the students in a number of the chats leading me to produce this little step-by-step that I released onto Google+ and advertised on Twitter. It received a lot of +1’s and was shared over a hundred times by both individuals and even Cadbury’s UK themselves, therefore receiving an even wider audience. Find Peta’s ‘Speed of Light Chocolate Experiment’ here! ‘Galileo vs Aristotle: The Easter Showdown!’ … Continue reading →

Zara won the Ecology Zone in June 2011. Here’s how she spent her prize money… A huge thank you to everyone who was involved in “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!” in June 2011. I had a wonderful two weeks and I hope that you had fun too! So… what did I spend the money on? I used the money to sponsor school kids to take part in the “Clyde in the Classroom” project and build their own trout hatchery! At the start of the project, children had a day out at Glasgow Science Centre where they enjoyed some hands-on science exhibits and also learned about fish eggs and how to look after them. One week later, a batch of brown trout eggs was delivered to the school and it was up to the kids to carefully look after them for seven weeks! The class checked the eggs … Continue reading →

Tom won the Oxygen Zone back in June 2010. Here’s what he spent his prize money on… On Saturday 4th June 2011 I used some of the money I won through taking part in I’m a Scientist to run a forensic science event at the Royal Institution (RI) of Great Britain. The event formed part of a larger Family Fun Day organised by the Royal Institution’s L’Oreal Young Scientist Centre. The Young Scientist Centre runs these events a few times a year each with a different theme. The theme for the June event was forensic science and as such I was aksed to help out. I decided to donate some of prize money as a prize for the winning poster at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Analytical Science Network (ASN) annual conference, ‘Emerging Analytical Professionals’ in May 2011 but I decided to spend the bulk of the money on … Continue reading →

Sam won the Evolution Zone in June 2011. He’s spent his prize money on a very good cause: Many thanks for the £500 prize money. I have donated it to Village Education Project Kilimanjaro. This is a charity dedicated to improving education (including science education) in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. In this part of the world most schools are in a terrible condition. As the subsistence farming lifestyle wanes, children of today will be unable to follow in the footsteps of their fathers. They will need education in order to achieve new jobs and new homes in the future. Science education is a big part of this. The £500 will almost entirely pay for the solar paneling on the computer centre to be replaced. Electricity usually cuts out for a few hours a day, which entirely paralyses the computer centre for example. In the computer centre, access to the … Continue reading →

Barbara won the Phosphorous Zone back in June 2011. Since then she’s been putting her prize money to very good use: On Saturday 10th March 2012 we held the first ever Luton Science Fair to coincide with National Science and Engineering week. We organised 26 stalls covering nutrition, astronomy, robotics, space tourism, Mission to Mars, midwifery, sports therapy and environmental science (to name a few). Our Professors (4 of them) gave talks on the coral reefs, the science of secrecy, science and the Modern Olympics and Science and the Media. We offered lab tours to the science, computing, TV and sports therapy labs. We finished with a presentation from Mad Science – I have now drunk dry ice and watched a grown man blast his face with a leaf blower (something you should see once in a lifetime at least). The event was opened by our Vice Chancellor, The Mayor … Continue reading →

Paddy won the Titanium Zone in June 2011. Here’s how he spent his prize money… As planned, I used the IAS prize money to help pay my way to Austin, Texas USA for the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America in August 2011. It was a great opportunity for me as a PhD student to attend a conference on the other side of the Atlantic and one that covered such a huge range of topics. I presented my work on the Galapagos sea lion in a session on disease and epidemiology. I received useful feedback after my talk and met other researchers, some of whom I’m still in contact with and hope to collaborate with in the future. The results I presented described the development of parts of the immune system in the Galapagos sea lion and presented evidence that human influence on the Galapagos Islands increases immune … Continue reading →

Carys won the Scandium Zone in June 2011. It looks like she’s been pretty busy spending her prize money… I was so happy to have won ‘I’m a scientist’ as it meant I could more effectively do something I think is crucially important – educating young people about climate change from a scientific perspective. And this is something that I have since been able to achieve! Along with two colleagues, we have recently established Earthclass, an outreach event based in the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London. Earthclass is a free event where students from schools around London can come to Imperial College, and learn about geosciences in fun and interactive ways. We are primarily inviting schools that took part in the IAS event I took part in, as they seem to be keen about learning more about science! Earthclass is based around the research being … Continue reading →

Helen won the Sports Zone in June 2011. Here’s what she wrote about spending her prize money… I wanted to write to update everybody who voted for me and anyone else involved in ‘I’m a Scientist – Get me out of Here!’ in June 2011. I was the winner in the Sports Science Zone, and I had fierce competition so it was a huge surprise when I won. I had previously worked with very underprivileged pupils in schools in townships in South Africa and I used the prize money to return to the schools and deliver some more sport psychology and life skills lessons. These pupils have a very different home and school life than students in the UK do. Many of them are orphans, because they have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and it is estimated that between 20-40% of the pupils in the township schools have HIV themselves. … Continue reading →

Adam won the Space Zone in March 2011. Here’s what he’s been up to with his prize money… I was thrilled to be crowned the winner of the Space Zone, and have already invested in two of the projects mentioned on my competition page! I have already donated some of the money to support the fantastic pantomime “Ellie the Electron and the Quantum Circus” created by Dr. Yvette Hancock at the University at York. The Pantomime follows the story of Ellie, who through her adventures presents the principles of quantum physics (a subject that many people think is very complicated!) in a fun, friendly and easily understandable way to an audience of youngsters and adults alike! The pantomime continues to play several shows a year, and the money will help support the transport costs for the actors and to purchase stage props for the show to make it even more … Continue reading →

James won the Stem Cell Research Zone in March 2011. Here’s how he spent his prize money… First of all, huge thanks to everybody who took part in the competition – the students, teachers, other contestants and organizers!! It was an incredible experience and I learnt so much from you all. So, what did I do with the £500 prize money? Well, as promised, I have invested in a video camera to make a video on how young scientists can make a positive impact on society and how much fun science can be. Recently, I teamed up with a clinician scientist friend of mine to make a short video on a different topic that is related to my clinical practice – caring for patients who have sustained nasty lower limb injuries. During this process, we both learnt a lot about how to make and edit videos. If you don’t mind … Continue reading →