Since winning I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here! generates a lot of publicity I was approached by our local science centre to take part in their ‘Meet the scientist programme’. This usually involves scientists from the North of England taking down a few props and talking to the visitors about their research. But thanks to the ‘I’m a Scientist’ prize fund I was able to set something up on a slightly larger scale (with the help of some volunteers from our research group)!

I wanted to take visitors (mostly children under 12 and their parents) on a journey down from the brain, to neurons, then into the neurons to the mitochondria and their DNA. We set up a large exhibit with lots of hands-on games and experiments. We also recruited the help of ‘Mitoman’ and his side-kick ATP to explain some of the details to the visitors. In the brain section of the exhibit we had a life like brain for people to feel, a game to show how the shape of animals brains changes depending on their behaviours and some brain models. For the neuron section we simply had some microscopes and sections of brain so people could really see what their brains look like. For those people that were interested we also had a section from a Parkinson’s disease case and a control to really show the devastating loss of cells from this brain region with disease.

Then moving onto everyone’s favourite organelle, the mitochondria, we had an ingenious circuit showing how important it was for neurons to have lots of mitochondria to generate their energy and some lovely pictures. In the final section of the exhibit we introduced mitochondrial DNA, firstly showing how little mitochondrial DNA there is in the cell compared to chromosomal DNA (with a judicial application of jelly worms (chromosomes) and jelly rings (mitochondrial DNA)), then we let the children try loading a gel for looking at mitochondrial DNA (we definitely discovered some natural scientists!) and finally showed how mitochondrial DNA could be used for tracking the movement of people across the globe!

We were completely rushed off our feet with visitors for the 5 hours we were there but enjoyed every minute! It was a really rewarding and fun day and everyone who volunteered to help me out gained a lot from interacting with the children and their families. None of this would have been possible without the prize from ‘I’m a Scientist’ and my team of volunteers. The prize fund helped me get together all the props I needed for the exhibition and to produce all the posters and information to go with it. There is still a little bit of the prize fund left, that I plan to use to repeat this next year!

Amy won the Healthy Aging Zone in June 2011.