Fanfare! We have now finally chosen all the scientists to take part in I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here! June 2010. Here they are, for your delight and delectation…

It’s been absolutely excruciating. We’ve had to turn down some fantastic sounding scientists doing fascinating work. Sadly we only have a finite amount of space! If any more funders would like to come forwards (err, hint!) then maybe we can manage more next year…

I’m a Scientist was recently described* as ‘the world’s most stunningly innovative teen science education program’ and this will be the biggest event we’ve ever run. In June we will have 100 scientists, engaging with 400 classes and 8,000 students. These scientists will be involved in making history!

How were these scientists chosen? We truly believe in listening to our users and that this makes the project much stronger. All scientists who applied wrote a one sentence description of their work and these descriptions were rated by students and teachers who are taking part in June, as well as by us and by a representative from our funders, the Wellcome Trust. We then combined these ratings to choose the scientists. If that isn’t two-way engagement I don’t know what is!

Congratulations to these scientists, we hope you are looking forward to it as much as we are.

*No, not by my Mum. But yes, I am in danger of wearing this quote out.

THEMED ZONES

Brain

Joanna	Brooks	University of Edinburgh	Why the right side of the brain prefers the left side of space
William	Davies	Cardiff University	Investigating sex differences in brain and behaviour
Michelle	Murphy	University of Nottingham	I investigate how your brain makes you fat
Fiona	Randall	Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology	I am interested in how our brain cells send messages to each other, and what goes wrong when they don’t do it properly.
Jane	Henry	The Open University	I am applied psychologist using social science to study how people can become the best they can be

Cancer Research

Gioia	Cherubini	Queen Mary, University of London	Making Viruses into Cancer Killers
Iain	Moal	Cancer Research UK	I run computer simulations to work out how the constituents of living beings interact with one another, in an attempt to construct the ‘circuitry of life’ and see how it goes wrong in cancer patients.
Joanna	Watson	University of Oxford	I try to work out why some people are more likely to get cancer than others.
Leo	Garcia	Institute of Cancer Research	Investigating tumour mobility using ultrasound elastography
Mariam	Orme	Institute of Cancer Research	I study the molecular mechanisms controlling apoptosis, a process through which individual cells in an organism ‘commit suicide’ if they are no longer necessary or if they pick up harmful mutations.

Use of Chemicals in Everyday Life

Joseph	Cook	University of Reading	New methods for synthesising hydrogels for various applications.
Rachael	Fox	Unilever	Taking new personal care products from R&D into the real world.
Hywel	Jones	Sheffield Hallam University	Materials scientist working on anything from volcanic ash to body armour, silver alloys to super-alloys
Poonam	Kaushik	Royal Botanical, Garden, Kew	Green Pestcidal formualtion deveopment against insects from food grade ingredients
Patience	Dorgu	University of Aberdeen	The effects of asphaltene precipitation on crude oil viscosity

Are we too Clean

Mark	Travis	University of Manchester	Discovering how ‘good’ immune responses fight infection, and how ‘bad’ immune responses are prevented that can lead to disease.
Mark	Fogg	University of York	I work out how bugs (bacteria), some very nasty ones as well as useful ones, make ‘photocopies’ of themselves (replicate), how they get energy from their food and how switches (genes) inside the bugs help connect these two things together.
Michael	Loughlin	Nottingham Trent University	Determining why bacteria and people sometimes find it so very hard to get along together; why they sometimes seem like very poor house guests and why our bodies over-react and end up hurting ourselves more than they ever would
Panos	Soultanas	The University of Nottingham	Biochemistry of bacterial DNA replication mechanisms and development of new antimicrobials.
Sarah	Burl	Medical Research Council The Gambia	I work in the field of infant immunology with particular interest in vaccines for infectious diseases in early life.

Drugs Development

Darren	Nesbeth	University College London	Modifying living cells to be more useful for making medicines
Deuan	Jones	University of Dundee	I try to find ways of killing parasites that we can use to develop new drugs for the poorer areas of the world.
Duncan	Hull	The European Bioinformatics Institute	Building a dictionary of drugs so that computers can intelligently understand chemistry published on the web
Lori-An	Etherington	University of Dundee	I test chemicals for a drug company which might be used as new medicines in the future
Michelle	Hudson	Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments	Finding practical and valid alternatives to the use of animals in biomedical science

Evolution

Betul	Arslan	Georgia Institute of Technology	Replaying the tape of life through resurrecting ancient ribosomal proteins.
Bridget	Waller	University of Portsmouth	I investigate the evolution of facial expression in humans and non-human primates.
Laurel	Fogarty	University of St. Andrews	I work with animals and mathematics to investigate how animals learn from each other and how the ability to learn evolved in the first place.
Maria	Pawlowska	University of Cambridge	Early life on Earth and its environment
Ceri	Thomas	University of Bristol	I work on the fossilised embryos  of marine animals that come from rocks half a billion years in age

Genes

Louise	Johnson	University of Reading	I’m interested in questions like: Why do our genes work the way they do? Whose side are they on? and Why do we mess everything up with sex?
Michaela	Livingstone	University of Sheffield	I try and work out how different proteins can affect whether a gene’s ‘message’ can get out of the nucleus where it’s made, in to the cytoplasm where it needed to be to made in to a protein.
Sian	Harding	Imperial College London	Changes in the beating cardiac muscle cell in heart failure, and the use of gene and stem cell therapy in heart disease
Steven	Kiddle	University of Warwick	Predicting and testing gene regulation in plants that are being infected by disease.
Yvette	Wilson	University of Dundee	Using genetics to improve barley straw for biofuel and stock feed

Imaging

Marieke	Navin	University of Sheffield	Study of elusive neutrinos these particles effect the way the universe was created and how it evolves
Pete	Edwards	Durham University	Exploring the Dark Side of the Universe
Stephen	Curry	Imperial College	I study the molecules of life and death in glorious detail in three dimensions
Steve	Roser	University of Bath	building cell membranes with bubble mixtures, looking at them with multi million pound donuts.
Tom	Hartley	University of York	I use brain imaging to find out how different kinds of memory are made and how we use them to recognise places and find our way about.

IVF

Claire	O’Donnell	North West Specialised Commissioning Team	I work out which new treatments are likely to be of most benefit to people (and which aren’t!) so the NHS can be fair to everyone; otherwise we’d end up spending all the money on a few gadgets with bells, whistles and flashing lights and the rest of us would have to make do with a couple of plasters.
Greg	FitzHarris	University College London	Why women’s eggs ‘go off’ as they get older
Jane	Cleal	The University of Southampton	I show how things cross the human placenta in order to feed the fetus; this is vital for fetal survival and has never been done before!
Jo	Broadbent	NHS North East Essex (PCT)	I am a Public Health Consultant in the NHS and apply the principles of public health science to improve the health of the population in North East Essex.
Nuruz	Jaman	University College London Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust	We investigate mainly the causes of male infertility.
Vicki	Onions	University of Nottingham	Researching whole ovarian freezing and transplantation for fertility preservation in women and girls, for example, undergoing sterilising chemo- or radiotherapies.

Sports Science

Peter	Styring	University of Sheffield	Carbon dioxide capture & re-use; snowsports engineering
Rebecca	Randell	University of Birmingham	Investigating the effects of green tea on fat burning during exercise
Sally	Barber	University of Leeds	The effect of exercise upon cardiovascular changes and functional ability in health and disease states.
Sally	Fenton	University of Birmingham	Research as part of a multi-national european collaborative group scientifically validating the health and fitness benefits associated with playing football in childhood and assessing the implications this may have for the current obesity epidemic.
Sian	Lawson	Newcastle University	Studying the musculo-skeletal system using the mechanics of movement.

GENERAL ZONES

Beryllium

Daniel	Mietchen	University of Jena	I do methodological work (primarily imaging) in biophysics to investigate life across scales in space and time, e.g. catalysis, cell division, fossilization, cold hardiness, music perception, brain folding.
Derek	Mann	Newcastle University	We are discovering ways to encourage reversal of liver damage caused by viruses, alcohol and obesity.
Ian	Sillett	Home Office	I provide scientific support and advice to law enforcement and counter terrorism agencies for the UK Home Office, specifically in the area of automated cctv analysis.
Philip	Wadler	University of Edinburgh	I design programming languages. It’s like inventing new ways to think.
Upul	Wijayantha	Loughborough University	My research interests include nanotechnology, solar energy harvesting, energy conservation and energy storage.

Boron

Alastair	Sloan	Cardiff University	Tissue engineering of hard tissues (teeth and bone) and use of stem cells in developing new therapies
Emma	Carter	University of Birmingham	Using a quantum force to make a new generation of micro machines
Hywel	Vaughan	Bloodhound SSC	Design Engineer on Britain’s latest Land Speed Record Vehicle. Designing the cockpit and steering wheel for a 1000mph car.
Keith	Brain	University of Birmingham	Understanding how the nerves that travel throughout our body subconsciously regulate all our essential bodily functions.
Vicki	Stevenson	Welsh School of Architecture	I try to help people reduce their reliance on fossil fuels through energy efficiency and alternative energy sources.

Nitrogen

Donna	MacCallum	University of Aberdeen	My work focuses on investigating how fungi are able to set up infections, and sometimes kill, seriously ill patients.
Joanna	Buckley	Freelance	I promote science to young people (on radio and in books) but previously I worked on developing silver dressings to kill bacteria such as MRSA
Mark	Lancaster	University College London	Particle physics – I am seeking to understand the evolution of the Universe in the first fraction of a second after its birth in the Big Bang in terms of a small number of fundamental particles and forces and these processes ultimately resulted in the cre
Stuart	Kyle	University of Leeds	Trying to persuade cells of the body to grow on an artificial scaffold outside the body that will be replaced inside the body – tissue engineering using smart nanomaterials
Tim	Craggs	University of St Andrews	We use state of the art microscopes to watch individual molecules interacting and changing shape

Oxygen

Antonia	Hamilton	University of Nottingham	when you see your friend point to an ice cream van, how does your brain understand and respond?
Matthew	Hurley	University of Nottingham	Tyring to stop bacteria working as a team in lung infections in children with cystic fibrosis
Douglas	Blane	Freelance Science Communicator	Used to design and model dynamic systems (nuclear reactors, underwater robots, oil-rigs); now science writer, journalist, communicator.
Tom	Hardy	Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB)	Government research and development in the field of counter terrorism (explosives and weapons)
Hugh	Roderick	Leeds University	I’m developing pest resistant crops for African farmers.

Fluorine

Laura	Maliszewski	UK Science and Innovation Network, British Consulate-General Boston	I’m a Virologist informing UK policy in life sciences and building US-UK scientific collaborations
Lily	Asquith	University College London	Smashing particles together and seeing what happens
Mark	Roberts	University of Oxford	How bacteria sense the outside world (Bacterial sat nav….)
Paul	Roche	Cardiff University	University and schools education, public outreach in astronomy, and occassionlly helping to weigh a black hole
Sarah	Bardsley	Environment Agency	I am a Horizon Scanning Scientist – I identify new science and technology developments that may impact the environment in the future.

Neon

Daniel	Richardson	University College London	I study social cognition – in this case, how people talk, think and lie – by using lots of gadgets to track movements of their eyes and body.
Jon	Copley	University of Southampton	I explore undersea volcanoes, miles deep on the ocean floor, in search of new species of deep-sea creatures, so we can better understand the web of life in the oceans – our planet’s largest habitat and last unexplored frontier.
Louise	Dash	University of York	I use computer models to study the physical properties of nanoscale devices and understand how they interact with their environment
Sharon	Sneddon	University of Manchester	I am trying to find ways of creating ethically acceptable human embryonic stem cells.
Zoe	Duck	Univeristy of Reading	During infection, the bubonic plague bacterium covers itself in a protein that activates the immune system- my job is to work out how the protein gets out of the cell

Sodium

Andrew	McKinley	University of St Andrews	Light is all around us, but we can now use it to pick up and move microscopic cells, to control them, and even to perform surgery – without even touching them!
Ben	Still	Queen Mary, University of London	I am a Neutrino Particle Physicist; I use the very smallest building blocks of Nature to answer the Universes biggest questions.
Beth	Dyson	University of Manchester	Trying to stop plants getting sunburnt!
Heather	McKee	University of Birmingham	Psychology of weight loss, motivation and goals
Louisa	Chard	Queen Mary, University of London	designing genetically engineered viruses to treat cancer

Magnesium

Alexandra	Kamins	University of Cambridge	Fruit bats in West Africa can carry diseases that affect people, and we’ve discovered that people hunt and eat the bats; just who’s at risk and of what, exactly?
Dean	Whittaker	University of Bath	I use neutron scattering to work out where atoms are and how they’re jiggling about in disordered materials.
Jessica	Housden	EADS Astrium Ltd	I design spacecraft the look at climate change
Luisa	Ostertag	University of Aberdeen	I am trying to find out how eating specific foods (for example dark chocolate) can influence your risk for getting cardiovascular disease (like stroke or heart attacks).
Sian	Foch-Gatrell	University of Dundee	Population composition and abundance, identification efficiency and the genetic structure of great white sharks

Aluminium Zone

Hermine	Schnetler	United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre	I am a Systems Engineer and responsible to design and develop telescopes and instrumentation to allow the UK Astronomers to do their research.
Katie	Mee	British Geological Survey	Geology and volcanology
Laura	Dixon	Scottish Agricultural College	I study what motivates animals to perform various behaviour patterns, including both normal and abnormal behaviours.
Nathalie	Pettorelli	Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London	I am exploring the possible effects of environmental change on wildlife & ecosystems
Paula	Salgado	Imperial College London	I focus on finding out the shape (structure) of life’s fundamental molecules: proteins, since that’s really important to understand their function and can also help develop targeted drugs to cure and prevent diseases.

Silicon

Andrew	Leitch	University of Edinburgh/NHS	I’m a clinical research fellow; a doctor working in science to develop new treatments for lung inflammation.
Andrew	Maynard	University of Michigan	Helping people to make science-informed decisions about stuff that affects them
Emma	Pilgrim	North Wyke Research	I am an ecologist working to ensure farms can be both profitable and wildlife havens.
Marianne	Baker	Bart’s Institute of Cancer (Cancer Research UK)	I am a PhD student working on pathological angiogenesis (blood vessel growth into tumours) in Down’s Syndrome & how researching this can help develop new anti-cancer therapies.
Paula	Gilfillan	Ministry of Defence (Royal Navy)	I research, develop and write environmental management policy for the land estate of the Royal Navy.

Please note, this list may be subject to change.